#will probably start using that tag for all of my spec posts lol

[rosyronkey]

hi! i wrote an essay about rosy ronkey and her clothes, and i hypothesized what time period i think shes from/inspired by ^^ below if you wanna read more :))

ive been fixated (or had a special interest or whatever you want to call it) on rosy ronkey for a YEAR today. i've always been pretty interested in her outfit from an aesthetically pleasing point of view, but recently i wanted to see if i could find any trends and time periods in the inspirations of her clothes, which is what this essay is about! it’s going to be an explanation of most of her clothes, top to bottom, from what i can assume with the research i've done. i say research, but i probably don’t have the best sources? they’ll be linked below, but it was really more cross-referencing than anything else lol

i reached out to annie montgomerie for comment/criticism, but she’s obviously very busy and i enjoyed my research from a subjective point of view :)

basic specs on rosy (no one else but me cares): looking at rosy, the only zoomorphic, or animal looking, aspect of hers is her head. judging by proportions and cross-referencing, she looks to have the body of an american girl doll. this is just what i’ve noticed, but annie’s most recent stuff is way less anthropomorphized compared to rosy and the group she was made with. looking at annie’s most recent exhibit, hand me downs, every single piece is completely animal, with hand-sculpted claws, paws, wings and hooves. some of these dolls legs still look like american girl doll legs, but most everything else is animalistic. this isn’t important, but i just thought id mention it because artists’ growth over time is cool!

starting with her coat, it looks like a double-breasted red childrens’ coat with two rows of two buttons each. these kinds of coats are still available today, but i could find the closest matches by looking at 1920s childrens’ coats, specifically rothschild coats. the rothschild family has a long and complicated history, but all that’s important to know is that they are new york based (which doesn’t totally fit my assumptions about her; in general i assume all of annie montgomerie’s dolls are british because of her nationality) and they’ve been in business for over 100 years. by cross-referencing the growing style of double-breasted coats in the 1920s, and the style of rothschild childrens’ coats in ads from the time, i feel like it’s easy to assume rosy's character has this coat, or at least was very heavily inspired by it.

a theory i’ve seen before is that the ticket on her coat is a luggage label. these were used during WWII to evacuate british children during the blitz. the history press site says luggage labels listed “name, school and evacuation authority,” and is also where i got most of my information. i want to tentatively deny this theory. i'm pretty sure the ticket is an annie montgomerie staple opposed to a part of rosys' character. she's shown with the tag in the yorkshire sculpture park video, and on gerard way’s website, but she’s missing it in all the photos posted by annie montgomerie herself on facebook and instagram. almost every single annie montgomerie piece on display or for sale has a tag as well. i love this theory, and it’s probably what got me interested in researching her outfit in the first place, but i don’t think i could prove it if i tried.

other than the ticket, she has white roses on the left side of her coat and some smaller twigs? sticks? pinned to her collar. white roses symbolize purity, youthfulness, innocence, and in some contexts, respect for the departed. i couldn’t find any historical photos of children with roses in their outfits, but across the board that was the result i got for their meaning. i can’t discern what she has on her right collar for the life of me, if someone else can figure this out, PLEASE tell me

her dress is pink, with a cinched embroidered waist and a peter pan collar. peter pan collars became popular in the 1920s, and have been a staple of childrens’ dresses since (sources for this one were a few blogs and wikipedia, but also some ads, so i feel pretty confident with it.) some ads for girls’ dresses in the 1920s had the same soft pleats and embroidered waist as seen on rosys’ dress. i don’t think there’s a meaning behind the color, except that it compliments the red coat and her fur.

her stockings are standard, I couldn’t find much special meaning behind them, british children have been wearing stockings forever, and for girls especially, stockings became more popular in the 1920s as dresses got shorter. usually they were sheer and nude, and rosys’ look like the gray kind kids wear today, but i think it’s still period appropriate to an extent. her shoes look like red mary janes for american girl dolls, just more scuffed and dirtied. mary jane shoes themselves have been around for a while (called “bar shoes” originally,) but they got their name in 1904. in one of the first drafts for this, i read the fairy tale “the red shoes” to see if it offered any insight. i thought it’d be fun to relate, but it’s just a popular danish fairy tale, and it was hard for me to entertain the idea for long.

TLDR: i think rosy ronkeys outfit is inspired by british 1920s fashion!

that’s all I have! i apologize if this was underwhelming or overwhelming or whatever, i had no model to base this off of and the only tumblr essays i read are from my friends <3 i hope you enjoyed! i love rosy ronkey!

link to my dumbfuck google doc with all the links and braindump on it :)

[usereddie]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

tagged by @jdeanmorgan like....a good few days ago lol getting to it now <33

How many works do you have on ao3?

40. little known bia lore is that it used to be 41 but i archived a larry one shot i wrote sophomore year of high school before i started posting for shameless LMAO

What's your total ao3 word count?

338,716

What fandoms do you write for?

911 mainly!!! but i've also written for shameless (gallavich), IT (reddie), wednesday (wenclair), and a league of their own (jesslupe)

Top five fics by kudos:

#LAFDads (silliest thing ever so ofc it's my most popular), whenever you call me, i'll be there, call me by your name, i got all my sisters with me (which has actually gained so many kudos lately bc it keeps getting rec'd on twt lol), baby don't you know (you're my golden hour)

i did not know these were my top five lol

Do you respond to comments?

not as much as i'd like :( there really are only so many ways you can say thank you, but i do try!! especially when the fic is first posted. i just get so many that it gets overwhelming to keep up, but i appreciate all of it soooooo soso much i mean that i really do.

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

probably some spec? i'm a "happy ending or bust" kinda guy tho idk if i have anything

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

well! all of them! but maybe i think i wanna merry you since it was them getting engaged at a christmas party. doesn't get fluffier than that ngl.

Do you get hate on fics?

i did on the first bucktommy fic i posted lol (after episode THREE btw because i have always seen the vision /lh)

Do you write smut?

yes!!

Craziest crossover:

never written one

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don't think so?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

i also don't think so

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

not really

All time favorite ship?

buddie and sterek!

What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

i mourn parent trap fic daily but also this rivals to lovers choir director au i got about 40k into and never finished. rip durufle requiem one day i will love on you again.

What are your writing strengths?

my lit professor says i write good metaphors? which i'll agree with, i like the way i describe inner monologues.

What are your writing weaknesses?

smut in many ways but especially in the sense of "oh my god can the english language please pretty please come up with a new synonym for cock i can't do this."

also, i have a hard time writing dialogue that feels organic to me? i think the end result works out fine but it doesn't come immediately

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

i'm fluently bilingual and do switch between english and portuguese in conversation, so it does feel realistic for a character to do that, but it's down to personal taste when i like it or not

First fandom you wrote in?

well. phan.

Favorite fic you've written?

STRAIGHT EDDIE FWB YOU ARE SO LOVED BY ME!!!!!! wishing to be the friction it's my magnum opus. i almost called it my prima donna because those words are the same in my mind.

tagging @bucktommys @bibuddie @honestlydarkprincess @sibylsleaves i'm sure y'all have alrdy gotten tagged and done this or gotten tagged and ignore it but i have no memory of anything at all ever!!!!!!!!!

#be quiet bia #tag games

[thesherrinfordfacility]

orwellian's a great word for it actually. "appropriate raiments will be provided" is the most disturbing thing in the whole series and i stand by that. this interpretation of heaven has definitely coloured my reading of the show especially how i see the fall so it's cool to see someone who agrees!

hard agree that pure coercion would be a total cop out. it's just that he does seem nervous so i do think he's aware of a certain degree of potential danger. i initially thought the metatron must have let slip an implication somewhere but i much prefer your idea that he suspected something. and well. i've been saying basically since season 2 came out that accepting the offer doesn't equal having completely fallen for it. will come back to that in my thoughts on the whole mess that was that domestic.

the blanket permission to come scream at you is greatly appreciated and i'll definitely make use of it; i love this kind of media dissection and speculation. 🦭

(p.s. i did indeed end up making the chekov's list since my ocd never can leave well enough alone lol. brace yourself: incoming!)

hihi again, 🦭 anon!!!✨

yes!!! in the context of 1984, especially, that line really is ominous; obviously there is a fine line between a corporate uniform and dictated dress, especially as the only scene where we see all of the angels look the same (iirc) is the waiting platoon in s1. otherwise, all of the angels do have individual dress/style (but similar enough to show belonging), even in the job scene, even if certain elements of their designs indicate shared rank or moral alignment... but the implication of subjugation made by clothes being specifically chosen for the prospective mind-wiped gabriel is... interesting.

and of course - aziraphale's outfit is very different to that of the other angels, in it being actual human clothing, and showing unashamed signs of wear and comfort. i remarked in a post that in job especially, his jobes (job robes) are very similar in aesthetic to that of michael and gabriel compared to say muriel's. could be that it's the appropriate dress of a principality rank, but im not... wholly convinced.

anyway, let's get on with your list!!! a herculean effort, truly!!! hope you don't mind, but a) ive copied and pasted it under the cut, because b) id love to use it as a checklist for myself (and of course if anyone else does!) re: things ive talked about, or indeed things that i have Thoughts on... or even things that i haven't thought to talk about and will probably look into doing so in the future!!!✨✨

episode 1:

starting with the big one there's the pre-fall sequence. the fall itself. talked a lot about these two things/the whole theme in general, found under the #the fall/the great war spec tag

maggie's spelling under the #we need to talk about maggie theory tag - babygirl is an angel, im convinced of it

"what's the point of it all" i mean, kinda talked about this in connection with stuff under the #god is dead theory tag, and in a couple of different asks; mainly that god doesn't give two hoots about any of it, and just wanted to give everyone and everything free will - and they have to work out the consequences for themselves (whilst she throws in a few chaotic sprinkles to keep things interesting)

shax's insider information about heaven ive definitely not discussed shax at all really, and i definitely have a few things id like to work out... main one being, for me, how she went from wondering where aziraphale was in ep3, to suddenly knowing how to exactly triangulate his position in ep4 finally talked about her in the #shax meta tag!!!

the demons being on half rations didn't really think to look at this!!! that could be interesting, especially with the short-staffed comment... someone did put to me that bc the apocalypse failed, everyone on earth continues dying and adding to the population of the Damned, so the work vs demon ration is steadily getting outweighed... but hm, could be something more than that!

"something terrible" because are we sure we're sure that that was about the stuff we've already seen you know, i wondered this too after ep6!!! it was a very interesting choice of words for me, bc whilst yes gabriel's fate was looking pretty shit, the line was almost a bit... well, over-announced? they kept repeating it? like, gabriel said he had to bring the box to aziraphale/the bookshop otherwise something terrible would happen... but why specifically the shop? is it just because aziraphale is the only angel/sanctuary on earth? is it because he was drawn to an angel that's also fallen for a demon? is it because aziraphale is simply kind? i don't trust that it's any of these explanations at all (or maybe all of them and another besides)... and tbh i think god has something to do with it. another speculation for the to-do list!!!

the book of life this one ive remarked on a fair bit under the #book of life theory tag, but it's fairly disjointed from other bits and pieces - tbh i probably need to do a long post at some point as to where all my theories etc join up... bc for the moment all of them are full of loopholes

michael and uriel's power politics oooooh i literally don't have a single scooby on this... id have to think on this a little more

the very highlighted matchbox quote this one ive had sat in the drafts for ages bc i can't quite parse it out - where does leviathan come into it? is it a reference to crowley-as-aziraphale spitting fire during the execution? why would it be on a matchbox of a bloody pub? is it a clue from god? is god linked to jim/gabriel somehow? gahd this one is still giving me a headache kinda? wrote about this - here, no tag for this specifically - and im still not fully satisfied that is the meaning of the matchbox but i think (hope) it might be somewhere near the mark?

1650 i speculated (or, well, dreamt up a hc) as to what this potential flashback could entail in a LWA response somewhere - in any case, give me the boys in cromwellian england and give it to me Now

the 25 lazarii miracle my batshit theory (and yet it makes complete sense to me, i stand by it) is in my #25 lazarii theory tag

episode 2:

heaven and hell working together as a single good cop bad cop system this is similarly stagnating in my drafts at the moment!!! but it's a bit of a mindbender for me bc it means i need to pick apart what everything thinks the job/satan bet was actually about... basically, i think it all comes back to understanding god's will - and all of them (yes, even crowley) have it wrong because imo god is completely amoral and is just the strongest advocate for free will... weirdly, i think the person that had the most right of it was gabriel.

"forces them under an awning together" god i hope this happens in s3... i mean there's no way it won't, right? and so many juicy possibilities (for my money itll be the bandstand, but equally would love, like, the stoop of the bookshop, and then have it mirrored again under like the porch of the south downs cottage) 🥺

gabriel's eyes glowing statements this tbh harks back to what i posted under the #25 lazarii theory tag - definitely something weird going on, and i have a gut feeling the boys accidentally made it even worse lmao

tricking heaven with a sleight of hand this is also going to require a bit more thought!!!

episode 3:

aziraphale's chekhov's diaries see im not sure how important i truly think theyre going to be, but if we go by the prominent influence of the crow road, it definitely has to be a s3 plot device, right? the only thing im scared of is that aziraphale's memory gets wiped, or he goes missing, and the books are key to getting back his memory/finding him... hmmm

crowley's consciousness extending into the bentley i think the crank is certainly important, even if just symbolic of his power - uses it to create nebulae, it survived the s1 explosion, etc. i do think bentley has its own kind of personality, but think it's borne out of proximity, use, and influence of her demon owner... obviously i could be entirely wrong, but i kinda hope it's more that he made her, and her allegiance as a sentient being is with him (and of course aziraphale by extension), mainly bc i want something to look after crowley... but then is it more poetic that the bentley is basically just him, and representative of him finding comfort in himself? idk tbh but she's a bad bitch and i love her

general resurrection themes ive talked a fair bit about the second coming aspect, but not about the resurrection and last judgement so much, so this is one for the list

gabriel's glowing eyes statements part 2 as above (and i realise that you might be talking about what he specifically says, not the general thing itself, 🦭 anon, but in a way what is being said is fairly self-explanatory imo, but why is the heftier question)

shax can sense gabriel in a way the archangels couldn't i personally don't think there's much by way of implication in the method in which she senses him (ie... smell? vs michael's weird sixth sense), but i do think there is something about the fact they can sense him at all... talked about in #25 lazarii spec and the #shax meta tag!!!

"it's always too late" oh god 💀 i had the most batshit theory about this that i don't even want to talk about BUT im with you that it's... an odd line. i love that it potentially references line in the book about crowley's watch being set to hell's time, which is set at "too late", but beyond that... not entirely sure why the line was said or said so... blatantly? feels like something obvious would explain it

rumours that aziraphale and crowley were an item that so far don't seem justified based on what hell knew. rumours that apparently had no major consequences for crowley despite one harmless photo warranting a legion to collect him [screams at 1941 truther sign] yeah this is how it read to me too, 🦭! something definitely happened after that dinner, and im not saying a move was made (and potentially witnessed by a couple of errant nazi zombies) but i think a move was made (and witnessed by a couple of errant nazi zombies) - #1941 spec tag

the literal chekhov's gun in the bookshop this one has flummoxed me, but i did read a speculation about continuing the 1941 flashback today, which was utter genius (and so much better than what i managed to dream up in the above tag), and suggested the derringer will make an appearance in a fight-ish scenario in that scene... which is frankly bloody inspired tbh, and im very much convinced by

the miracle blocker oooooh i don't have a dedicated tag for this but i definitely talked about it in a post under the #sanctuary/bentley theory tag!!! i think it was potentially a chekhov's gun that we didn't see get fired

sleight hand to trick hell probably one to look at in hand with the one above about tricking heaven

the zombies just running around london kinda as i said above tbh, not sure what'll happen to them afterwards but presumably a grisly end being eaten and pooped out by a spider

1941 full stop. we have not seen the last of that night. goddamn right we havent [skips around the 1941 truther sign]

episode 5:

the lack of demons available for the attack pretty much what i said above in ep1 about being short staffed bc the Damned population keeps increasing... maybe? still one to look at in more detail though!!!

"i know. do it anyway" "i know. looking at where the furniture isn't" not necessarily in reference to these quotes specifically, but in the general context - discussed this (and potential crowley memory loss) in the #the fall/the great war spec and #book of life theory tags

"if it happens twice it might seem like an institutional problem" oh. OH. THIRD EYE HAS OPENED. because we know two things, right? gabriel didnt fall/wasnt intended to, so the 'happens twice' isn't realised. and heaven does have an institutional problem, practically embodies the term. so if this is foreshadowing. does aziraphale fall. oh no. Oh No (ive sort of discussed this in #scapegoat theory tag but that was strictly pre-eden context...) this however has actually just made me realise that this is a chekhov's gun literally pointed at aziraphale's head... shitshitshitshitshjthka

mrs cheng's weird look across the street see this is on my list but waaaay down it. think she could be a demon. will work on it at some point edit: talked a little bit about this in the #shax meta tag, but possibly needs a dedicated post, idk

nina and maggie's semi immunity to miracles so the bit where aziraphale can't miracle them? that to me is potentially the same explanation as the miracle blocker post (like it all connects). maggie is more immune than normal to the ball miracle? see #we need to talk about maggie theory tag. as for nina... im still not sure on. idk if she's a demon (which for me is a Thought if we consider that hell are short-staffed; she could be one of Many) but it feels a little on the nose... one for the list edit: talked a little bit about nina in the #shax meta tag, but definitely needs a separate post at some point

shax saying the shop isn't an embassy anymore but the demons still unable to get in i didn't think of it from this angle, but i think my theory still stands - under the #sanctuary/bentley theory tag

nina and maggie's immunity to miracles part 2 oh oops - see above

episode 6:

maggie being able to invite the demons into the shop i think she's an angeeeeeeellllll (see #we need to talk about maggie tag)

the speed at which the portal opens and it's potential as a means of spying my latest galaxy brain moment (i hope) - #sanctuary/bentley theory tag

haloes and the potential consequences of blowing them up this one is in the #halo theory tag

crowley opening the files not quite sure what you mean by this one, 🦭!!! do you mean about his rank? definitely tried parsing this particular headscratcher in the #AWCW spec tag

heaven was trying to restart armageddon in a way that seems awfully unofficial oooooohhh.... haven't looked at it this way, but definitely will be!!! might link in with #god is dead theory stuff, but will need more exploring!!!

saraqael having their own agenda honestly saraqael is my newest bad bitch (gn) and if my #saraqael spec is even halfway true, im going to explode i love them

"i'm the only first order archangel in the universe" *camera cuts to crowley* kinda talk about this in the #AWCW spec tag but since neil cremated the lucifer theory (rip) ive kinda left this aspect alone... tbh i don't think he was as important as he's set out to have been

"i'm the only first order archangel in the universe" full stop. statement's plenty suspicious on its own too. this is....... potentially very intriguing

memory wiping as just a thing heaven does when someone disobeys i need to reconcile #book of life theory with this tbh - like, the focus on memory is so strong in s2 that i strongly believe it has connection to falling... at which point, where does gabriel demotion/mem wipe punishment fit in? and where does saraqael fit in, too?

muriel having the same kind of position gabriel was going to be demoted to vaguely looked at this in #book of life theory tag posts i think, especially in reference to how their potential punishments (in muriel's case) mirror each other

heaven and hell are technically at war now. its not like anyone with authority actually called it off danced around this in the #halo theory tag, in reference to aziraphale declaring this new war, and yet they've been at war for a long time? yes the reflection of it being a cold war but still... interesting to think about especially when framed like this

it's possible to remove your essence and store it elsewhere definitely need to explore the possibilities and implications of this at some point, but the suggestion i made in the #25 lazarii theory post somewhat starts to look at this

hell is understaffed as already mentioned above

the shax furfur alliance not quite sure what to think about this, and whether it necessarily means anything more than it's put across (ie just that they are the danger duo of hell in s3?) idk tbh i just need to look at them both as individual characters a bit more first #shax meta tag!!!

the many strange things that could indicate something going on in the last fifteen minutes god.... just anything in the #feral domestic/final fifteen meta tag tbh

"does anyone ever ask for death" idk whether or not to take this as meaning anything deeper than metatron just idly thinking "hmmm aziraphale could refuse my coffee, refuse a chat... at which point ill probably need to destroy him etc. hey, i wonder if anyone - instead of coffee - has ever actually asked for death? funny name for a coffee shop"... and possibly a double meaning meant by Nina saying 'everything else was taken'?

saraqael being the only one other than crowley who recognises the metatron and their reaction well theres my school of thought that saraqael is potentially closer to metatron that we maybe thought (#saraqael spec tag), but then again - and this exact sentence just reminded me - i think in this particular instance, both saraqael and crowley have just come fresh from watching the trial, so that's why they both remember metatron... which begs the question of what happened between the trial and the final fifteen to make them forget? hmmm

almond syrup imo, #omelas theory

the possible miracle chime ehhhh i know i wrote about this but im still like 50/50 on it... but it fits my theory (in the #feral domestic/final fifteen tag) so im rolling with it - i think there might be a chime and i think it might be a failed miracle to change the coffee

the metatron and crowley seeming to have some kind of history lmao anything in #metatron spec or indeed #the fall/the great war spec tags tbh

aziraphale's peculiar mannerisms im getting so lazy with these responses now 🦭 anon im so sorry, but again recently speculated in the #feral domestic/final fifteen meta tag

the way the conversation between aziraphale and the metatron is only reported and very strangely transitioned in and out of as above

the nothing to see here shooting of the kiss this one...

i know ng said it was a continuity error but. the time skip on the clocks ...and this one ive looked at in the #time-stop theory tag, and im the same - not trusting continuity error on this... not just yet

the something's up vibes of metatron. the general scheming and manipulativeness. the framing as the wizard of oz. the colour scheme and the dice on his tie. the sigh of relief in the elevator lol #metatron spec

the credits scene i haven't really gone into this in any detail and tbh idk if it needs it - i think it's pretty reflective of some stuff ive talked about in the #aziraphale meta and the #feral domestic/final fifteen meta tags

plus special mention: not technically in the episode but the distinctly ominous madonna/crucifixion promo photos aaaaaaaand this one is in the #mary/pieta spec tag

again 🦭 anon im really sorry it got a little lazy towards the end!!! but im very, very grateful that you put this all in a list, because ive definitely got some stuff in mind that id like to parse out!!! and as ever - more than happy to scream about things so pop on back if you feel the need to scream with me!!!✨

#VERY long post but its so so so helpful #good omens #ask #in fact this is gonna go in the masterpost

[cj-writes-things]

~Introduction Post~

Hi, I'm cj

My pseudonym/pen name is Chris Shades (cringe I know but it made sense at the time)

I identify as genderfluid and use any pronouns (including it/its and neos, I'm chill with pretty much whatever, not a huge fan of she/her but don't mind it all that much either)

🩷🤍💜🖤💙

At the time of this post, I'm 18 and in my freshman year of college as an english major

I hope to be a writer, whether it be books, poetry, songs, shows- you name it, I just love to tell a good story

I'm queer (somewhere under the bi umbrella, maybe on the a-spec, and as mentioned above, genderfluid) and neurodivergent (AuDHD and possibly some other things I haven't quite figured out yet), so homophobia, transphobia, ableism, etc. will not be tolerated here

Things I'll probably post about here:

*My writing (obviously)*

**Music**

Art of various forms

Personal stories/experiences/musings

Photography- if I ever get a good camera :')

Dreams/goals

Whatever my current hyperfixation/special interest is (usually fandom-related)

Mental health, psychology, neurodiversity, etc.

✨️Aesthetics✨️

And I'd totally love to discuss/answer questions about any of those topics!

I'm also very interested in history, mythology, space, animals, theatre, and travel

*For the most part, I intend to use this blog to post fanfics, poetry, songs, and pieces of the multiple book series I have in the works

I look forward to sharing my stories with you all, but I do ask that you engage with my work in a respectful and considerate manner. If you don't like something, obviously you don't have to read it; constructive criticism is welcome and even encouraged but don't just hate-comment bc I do tend to take things very personally, and please don't ever repost without credit or use my work without permission as I do hope to eventually publish some of this stuff

(Also, I absolutely love talking about my OCs and the worlds they inhabit, so please please please don't hesitate to ask me about them)*

**I cannot for the life of me recognize or comprehend the genres and I may not be familiar with every single song or artist but I live and breathe music, I love to sing, I'm listening to music in my earbuds almost 24/7, I really want to learn an instrument (planning to start working on guitar this summer) and maybe even be in a band someday, and I'm always happy to give or receive song/artist recommendations or share specially curated playlists (including OC/series based playlists) if anyone's interested**

Fun facts:

I have a little sister and three dogs

I love the rain

I want to learn sign language

I was in a horrendous production of Alice in my senior year of high school (I played the caterpillar)

I absolutely cannot settle on an aesthetic; I love so many of them so much, so my style is kind of all over the place

I have an awful, stupid sense of humor (think dad jokes, corny puns, etc.)

Contact options:

"Ask" button under the blog title

Messages here on tumblr

Email: [email protected]

Phone number: [REDACTED]

You can also find me on...

My main tumblr blog: @duck-in-a-thrift-store

Instagram: mx.harris05

Among Us: MxHarris (username), tiemint#1852 (friend code)

YouTube Music: you can check out some of my playlists here

That's it for now I guess, I might eventually be on ao3 and/or webtoon and if that happens I'll update this with the relevant info

~Tagging~

(subject to frequent changes/updates, still in the works)

Music:

#cj's music recs

#song of the day

#cj's playlists

Warrior cats fanfic:

#love over law

#LoL Secrets (arc 1)

#LoL Truth (arc 2)

#LoL character

#LoL song

Side note: since I can only have one pinned post at a time, the love over law master post can be found here

Other writing:

#miscellaneous short stories

#common tale with a twist

#the prince × the pauper

#new blog #intro post #blog intro #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #artists on tumblr

[astradrifting]

Hiya anon, I’m answering this message over here to keep my blogs tidy! Thanks for the ask!

Oof, honestly I don’t have many concrete theories for ADOS other than what I speculated about Aegon’s death, it’s obviously so dependent on what happens in Winds that it’s all up in the air right now. I’m thinking Winds will almost definitely feature them reuniting and falling in angsty forbidden love amidst the backdrop of very messy Northern politics and an impending ice threat, with R+L=J being revealed by the end of it or early ADOS at the latest, for maximum pre-reveal incest angst.

I do think the show gave us a very, very, very rough idea of what happens, in that Jon will spend most of ADOS in the South while Sansa remains at Winterfell, in charge of the North. GoT managed to make Jon’s parentage a central part of the plot while completely sidestepping any of its actual implications or consequences, but I suspect that a big part of Jon’s ADOS plot will be reckoning with the secret and it’s reveal. Any resolution reached to the Northern politics in TWOW that involves Jon will be thrown into chaos with the reveal, so I could see a marriage between Jon and Sansa being proposed in order to tie Jon to the North and the Starks in the eyes of the lords before he goes South.

The secret being revealed also makes Jon being the only one who can go South make sense. The show’s “Only a king can treat with a queen” reasoning doesn’t hold up under scrutiny, since Jon being imprisoned on Dragonstone makes it clear that sending an emissary would have been smarter. Book!Jon and Aegon are both smarter than that, but “he is my long-lost brother and there is a lot of blood and history surrounding our births and our father’s choices that we need to reckon with” is a much more compelling argument for why the two of them might want to meet personally. Just in terms of narrative as well, why introduce a potential long-lost brother and then not have them ever meet?

Of course a lot of this also depends on what happens with the Others, since Jon’s story has been so tied with them from the beginning that it’d feel hollow if he didn’t have some involvement in how that is resolved, but that plotline is so inscrutable to me that I can’t even begin to theorise what happens there. I’ve got a tentative ‘Bran???’ mentally sharpied over a picture of the Others and that’s as far as my theories go :P

I don’t have a very clear idea on what Sansa’s plot will be while they’re separated other than that it will feature her growing into her rulership of the North. The show might have been accurate in that Arya arrives at Winterfell after Jon has left, and the sisters come into some sort of conflict over their past, their separation, and who they each had to become to survive. It’d serve as a nice way for Jon and Sansa’s stories to parallel again too - both of them having to (re)learn how to deal with a sibling that they barely know, who they don’t quite understand but desperately want to. But the sisters will resolve their differences and be stronger for it, possibly coming together to slay Littlefinger for his crimes against their father. Though I’m also in favour of Sansa taking care of him herself somehow, she has more foreshadowing for that specifically, and Arya has different deaths in her future.

Throughout this whole separation, I fully expect Jon and Sansa both to be heavily missing each other and wishing they were home together at Winterfell, annoying everyone around them by constantly going “I wish Jon/Sansa were here.” 😉 The show already explicitly showed Sansa missing Jon, so imagine how much more pining we’ll get when we can read her thoughts!

Sansa will also probably have a major part to play in the aftermath of Dany’s death. There’s a crazy amount of parallels between Baela and Rhaena Targaryen, who were instrumental in getting Corlys Velaryon freed after the poisoning of Aegon II, and Arya and Sansa, so it seems that, unlike in the show, they’ll be successful in getting Jon released following her murder.

That then totally leaves him free to be with Queen Sansa, hopefully as King in the North but I’d totally accept Prince Consort. I’m also a big believer in the Jon the Builder ending, pioneered (imo) by @istumpysk and @agentrouka-blog, in which he plays a big part in resettling the Gift with new lords.

His lord father had once talked about raising new lords and settling them in the abandoned holdfasts as a shield against wildlings. […] “It is a dream for spring, though,” Lord Eddard had said. “Even the promise of land will not lure men north with a winter coming on.”

If winter had come and gone more quickly and spring had followed in its turn, I might have been chosen to hold one of these towers in my father’s name. Lord Eddard was dead, however, his brother Benjen lost; the shield they dreamt together would never be forged.

(Jon V, ASOS)

To me, that last line reads like Sansa’s thoughts about seeing Jon again, how the thought is sweet but “of course, that could never be”. We know that that line exists solely to be subverted, because they are going to meet again. The same with this one; Lord Eddard and Benjen are gone, but their nephew-son still lives, and he can carry on their dream. It’d be a nice way of allowing Jon to keep some of his vows too - to still be the “shield that guards the realms of men” even after he has left the Watch (guarding from what, at the end of the series, I’m admittedly not sure *points to picture of the Others with ‘Bran????’ written in red sharpie and underlined*). I mean, you can’t just reference the title of the last book, the culmination of your epic fantasy series, in a throwaway line from Jon’s memory without it having some kind of payoff, George. Especially when it’s literally the only time the phrase occurs within the series. Nearly word for word, at least. There’s some “dream of spring” imagery that appears elsewhere that is pretty interesting... But that’ll be in a separate post because this is getting long enough!

So, uh, it turns out I actually do have a lot of thoughts on how ADOS will go! Basically, Jonsa ever after, the wolves coming again through their many adorable trueborn babies :) It won’t be plain sailing, they will face even more grief and pain before the end. But also the possibility of a happy ending, a dream of spring even in the depths of winter.

#astra rambles #jonsa #can’t help but dunk on got I’m sorry but I will not stop #meta #speculation #half speculation half 'my wildest dreams and hopes' #will probably start using that tag for all of my spec posts lol #ados speculation #…I just realised I partially quoted once upon a time for that last line

[lululawrence]

⭐️ Annual Writing Self-Evaluation 2021 ⭐️

I’ve been lucky enough to have done this in one form or another for the last several years and it is such a fun reflection back on the year. Thank you to @haztobegood @ladyaj-13 @quelsentiment @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed @disgruntledkittenface @kingsofeverything @justalarryblog @boosbabycakes28 @wadey-wilson @lt2soon @uhoh-but-yeah-alright @evilovesyou @jacaranda-bloom @loulovehome @larryyouknow and @sadaveniren AND @laynefaire for tagging me so I remembered to do it again this year! lol I hope I got everyone, sorry if I left someone out (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2020 apparently i did two last year, please ignore me)

1. Number of stories posted to AO3: 20 (what a lovely, round number!)

2. Word count posted for the year: 430,977

3. Fandoms I wrote for: One Direction (Band), Lewis Capaldi (Musician), BBC Radio 1 RPF

4. Pairings: lmaoooo excellent question. why doesn't the ao3 stats page have that info easily listed? and same with giving us info like how many fics i posted... why do i have to count that manually? lol ANYWAY pairings... right. ahem.

Harry/Louis

Zayn/Liam which turns into Zayn/Liam/Louis

Lewis Capaldi/Niall

Nick Grimshaw/Louis/Harry (one of which starts as Nick/Louis and the other starts as Harry/Nick, so those pairings as well...)

Niall/Louis (though it does imply at the end that it is an ot5 relationship)

Nick Grimshaw/Liam

Greg James/Harry

these are all main pairings btw. i'm quite proud of that spread. i was tempted to ONLY write poly and rare pairs next year, just for the fun of it, but i don't wanna limit myself in that way. if it happens, it happens, but sometimes i just really love writing harry/louis so yeah. anywayyyyy...

5. Story with the most: Kudos: Maybe You'll Like the Way I Am (holy shit, i had no idea this one had so many kudos...) Bookmarks: Maybe You'll Like the Way I Am (lmao this fic was apparently more popular than i remembered hahaha) Comments: On Christmas Day (In The Morning)

6. Work I’m most proud of (and why): i know i complain about this every year, but this really is incredibly hard for me to answer this year. i poured a lot of myself into so many fics this year and i have three or four i'm juggling between for this right now because of that. ugh i think... i think i have to say What I Have With You (I don't want with anyone else), and not just because it's the longest fic i've ever written and probably will ever write lol that fic has so very much of myself in it and i never thought... i just. it was such a complex fic that i wanted to write perfectly, and it just HAPPENED so perfectly. @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed was the perfect collaborator and inspiration and just. the fact she trusted me with that prompt and helped shape it so much to allow it to become what it did. i could go on for hours about that fic, so i'll just stop now but. yeah. that one.

7. Work I’m least proud of (and why): i refuse to answer this. lol for real though, i just really really love my fics, all of them, so i don't really have one i'm less proud of or whatever.

8. Share or describe a favorite review you received: again rude? there are so very many that mean so much to me, but i think most of them belong to What I Have With You (I don't want with anyone else). and you know what, i just went back and read a lot of them, and i'm not choosing one. i'm just gonna say collectively it's the comments on that fic. there were so many lovely ones that told me the pacing was perfect, or that they learned so much from it without the fic feeling preachy, or that several people who identify as a-spec found relatable aspects to their identities and experiences in the fic, and honestly i'm getting emotional thinking about it, so yeah. just. those. thank you to everyone who has read it, but truly thank you so very much to everyone who has commented on it as well.

9. A time when writing was really, really hard: this year the writing wasn't really hard in and of itself, but finding the time to write was INCREDIBLY hard and that was a theme from about june onward, but PARTICULARLY november and december. it's been fucking hard to find time to write, y'all, and i just want the time to wriiiiiite *sobs*

anyway. i guess you could say i'm still in it. lol

10. A scene or character you wrote that surprised you: haaaaaaaaa like everything?? i mean, truly. everything i wrote in the last six months of this year was just... so unexpected in almost every way. so yeah.

11. A favorite excerpt of your writing: please know i have been deliberating about this for DAYS and it took me FOREVER to figure something out, but my dearest @disgruntledkittenface shared a snippet of my Thou, Sun, Art Half As Happy stylinshaw fic and when i read it i was like oh... oh i do actually really like that? and like... i'm quite proud of it because i feel like writing kisses and physical affection in general is difficult for me and i just feel very... i dunno. anyway. the fact that i struggle with it so much and then maggie pointed this one out and i liked it, it just felt right. so! here we go. sorry for the long explanation... i just wanted to explain myself lollll here we go...

“Okay, so one of the shots I was really hoping for was to have one of us dip the other person for the kiss or photo or whatever, but I don’t really know which of you would be better for that, and who should do the dipping.” Louis raised his brows. “Do you have thoughts?”

“Well, I’d love to be a part of that, but Grim is a touch more coordinated than me. He should probably be the one getting dipped, though. Fair warning.”

Louis smirked. “Good to know.”

“Alright, well, come to me.”

Louis gasped and nearly started laughing at Harry trying to entice him to come closer, but before he could, Harry had reached out and pulled Louis flush against them, immediately capturing him in a kiss.

In an attempt to regain his balance, Louis’ arms flew out and wrapped around Harry’s neck. It meant that he was nearly even with Harry height wise, leaving him pressing up onto his toes, one foot slightly behind him, and pressed fully against Harry’s body. Nick wasn’t saying anything about their positioning, so Louis lifted one foot just in case the photo was able to capture it well and it looked alright.

“Oh my god, Harry’s giving you a foot poppin’ kiss!” Nick cried out, whooping a little bit. “I cannot believe I’m witnessing this right now. It feels like a momentous occasion.”

“Fuck off, Grim, you’re ruining the moment,” Harry griped before leaning back into Louis for another kiss, causing him to giggle.

12. How did you grow as a writer this year: i wrote a lot of long fics lolololol i honestly didn't think i was ever going to write a 50+k fic, and then this year i published four, and one of them broke 70k, which is insane. so yeah, that, plus also like...getting to write the a-spec alphas fic was a huge growing experience for me. plus i got to write girl payneshaw, which i never thought i would ever write, and a lewis/niall fic... i wrote a scottish character! how fun? ya know? just. i wrote a lot of stuff i just didn't think i would and i pushed boundaries i'd previously had, so it's just a year of a lot of growth in a lot of different ways imo

13. How do you hope to grow next year: i hope that i'm able to just keep that kind of openness and drive to write new things for me and keep enjoying it. that's the whole point, isn't it?

14. Who was your greatest positive influence this year as a writer (could be another writer or beta or cheerleader or muse etc etc): oh shit this is like my nightmare, right? having to name one person. sigh. i've even been trying to think about this one for a few days, and i cannot begin to think which ONE??? there are so many people. sooooo many. the write your way out chat, anyone who sprinted with me to write, all the amazing artists i worked with in big bang and reverse bang this year (@rishimaaaaa, @moon-sun-thyme, and @so-why-let-your-voice-be-tamed love youuuu!!!!), allllll the betas and brit/scottish picks i worked with, just everyone. all of you. love you.

15. Anything from your real life show up in your writing this year: too much, as per usual honestly, but for real, soooo many of louis' experiences in my a-spec alphas fic were based on feelings and experiences i've had, and then the entire basis of the fic Here We Come A-Wassailing is from my family's caroling tradition and how that has gone for over 20 years now lol the piano i described harry as haunting in On Christmas Day (In The Morning) is my parents' piano and the song harry struggles with is one of my sister's and my favorite christmas songs that my sister plays for us every year. lots of things, really, some bigger, some smaller. hehe

16. Any new wisdom you can share with other writers: just make sure you're happy writing, cause thats the whole point, right? to have fun and enjoy yourself! so yeah, i guess that is it. that and find your people. your people make all the difference, so make sure you're surrounding yourself with good ones.

17. Any projects you’re looking forward to starting (or finishing) in the new year:  ​lmaoooo STARTING THE BIG BANG I WAS SUPPOSED TO COMPLETELY WRITE DURING NANOWRIMO WOULD BE GREAT lolllll and a lot of others, to be honest. i have a lot of fics i want to write and hopefully i'll be able to write them this year lol

18. Tag some writers whose answers you’d like to read. i'm so late to this, so i'm just gonna tag @jaerie and @mercurial-madhouse but if anyone else wants to do this still and hasn't been tagged yet, this is me tagging you!

#sorry this is so late #sorry this is so long #omg i talk so much i'm so sorry guys it's been a TIME lol #2021 in fics #2021 review #self evaluation #i have no idea how to tag this lmao #about me #¯\__(ツ)__/¯

[shinesurge]

I’ve been holding off on making this post because I wanted to try it out myself and get settled in and make sure everything went okay, but seeing as I’ve gone ahead and updated my site and everything I thought now might be a good time to start talking about this publicly! 

If you’ve known me for more than five minutes you know I fucking hate Webtoon, like, a lot. Every aspect of it disgusts me to the core of my being, and while Webtoon is the ugliest version of them the aspects that I hate also extend to basically any comic aggregate site. I hate that they treat artists like content robots, I hate that they treat comic readers like morons who aren’t capable of engaging with complex stories, I hate that they actively try to strip away all the cool parts of indie comics by cultivating sterile and impersonal environments that discourage artistic experimentation and unique expression.

So! I hope you’ll be interested in what I have to say about this new platform that’s (hopefully) going to be out of alpha this summer. If you think you like reading comics on Webtoon, I really encourage you to check out Dillyhub once it launches. That’s the short version, but I have a LOT to say about this! So I’m putting the rest of this under a cut.

Full disclosure, I’m not getting paid or anything for this. The creative outreach at Dillyhub contacted me a few weeks ago asking if I’d be interested in having Kidd Commander be one of their launch titles when they go live this summer. I was hesitant at first, since I actively distrust anything claiming to be For Creators at this point, but they answered my pushy questions patiently and everything seemed on the up and up so I gave it a shot; I’ve been needing a mobile mirror for KC anyway. Eventually they invited me to the alpha creator discord, where they’ve been working directly with all of us artists to improve the platform, and now to be honest I’m REALLY excited for this thing to get off the ground. Nobody asked me to make this post, but since I’ve spent years whining and bitching about how other services do wrong by their creators, I thought I’d talk about this one that’s doing things right.

So, the biggest advantage this site has for creators over others in my opinion is that it. Treats us like individuals, regardless of follower count lmfao. If you’re a new person just starting out with your new webcomic, here’s what webtoon does for you:

Note: you don’t get a custom banner, you don’t even get to choose the solid color it is. That big circle icon is ALSO the image that shows up in searches, but everywhere else on the site it’s a 100x100px square, so you have to choose whether you want it to look good as a giant circle at the top of your comic’s page OR whether you want to look good in search results. Which, by the way, is the ONLY way for people to find you if you’re not partnered. And that’s it! You have no monetization options, you won’t show up on the genre pages, and when someone DOES stumble across your page it looks super unprofessional. Good Luck! 

Now here’s my Dillyhub page(s):

You don’t get a static banner and one icon, you get a whole carousel banner with as many images as you want front and center as soon as you get to the project page. You get seven (custom!) genre tags, as opposed to Webtoon’s single tag you have to pick from their list, and plenty of room to talk about your work. The episodes are even laid out better, you get a MUCH bigger preview space to work with and they’re nice and big on the bottom half of the page:

you know, like they’re actually presenting ART lmfao.

That’s already an ENORMOUS improvement, but here’s my favorite thing.

o hm that’s a lot of super cushy settings I have for every individual episode, but what’s that, Episode Type?

LIKE.

listen, i know this is probably a bit specialized if you’re not a comic maker yourself, but this is a HUGE DEAL. You can post vertically OR page by page! You can even post pages two at a time for double page spreads, or so they read like a physical comic book! AND their specs are really open, as long as the file meets the size requirement you can make it whatever shape you want. You don’t have to reformat all your shit to post here!! I posted the entire first volume of KC STRAIGHT FROM THE PRINT FILES in like half an hour!!! The episodes can also be any amount of pages, you can post a single page or an entire chapter all in one go!

So that’s just the project page for the comic, let’s see what happens when I click on my username there.

Each author gets their own unique page (which you can tack a vanity url to!) to present themselves however they want! You always have the banner at the top, but beyond that you have a ton of options. Among other incredibly useful tools that really should just be bare fucking minimum at this point, like the ability to preview your page on different devices, you start customizing your blank page with this set of widgets,

and from THERE you can customize them MORE, you can promote your patreon or your kickstarter or whatever! Having this creator space ALSO means that if you run several comics, or if you want to promote your comic AND your illustrations, you can just separate them into individual projects! Each with their own page! This is also really nice as a reader because you can subscribe to a creator but you can also just subscribe to specific projects, if you don’t want to get ALL of their stuff in your inbox. It’s so good y’all hh.

Once again, all of this functionality is just THERE as soon as you make your account. You don’t need to be “partnered” or whatever the fuck, you don’t need to meet a certain follower threshold to unlock the ability to operate normally. You get your own creator space to present yourself how you prefer, you get pages for all your projects, you can even set up monetization options (and change them for individual pages IN a project) right from the start.

ok ok let’s compare this to my webtoon page

oh that’s right webtoon just puts your greyed out name at the bottom of each comic and that’s it because human beings don’t make this stuff, my bad lol anyway

Other fun shit that Dillyhub does that makes me feel like they’re people who have actually consumed or made comics on the internet at some point in their lives:

-When you log into the “studio” space, you’re in your creator account. When you log OUT of the studio space, it’s like you swap to a “reader” account, where you can access your pull list and comment on things with a different name and profile icon. Again, maybe only cool if you’re a creator, but if you ARE then you know exactly why this is incredibly useful lmao

-You can set up “hidden” projects, so if you only want certain things to be accessible by certain people or to not show up in searches that’s an option! You have SO much control here it’s great.

-The comment section has moderation options GODDD. You also have a real comment space, you know, so it actually encourages building a community (and a rapport with your community, if you like), and you also can just turn comments off entirely if you want! I haven’t used it much yet, obviously, but it’s been made very clear in the discord that artists want better control over their comment sections and the devs have it on their priority list.

-Absolutely every step of customization gives you a preview before it’s live, so you can easily see what these images you’re posting in different places are going to look like before you beam them to your followers’ inboxes. This includes individual episodes!

-This was sort of in one of the screenshots but it’s important so I’m saying it here too: the option to mark individual episodes as mature or with content warnings, rather than having to mark an entire comic as Mature Spooky Scary Content because of one or two pages getting a bit hairy.

This site is only in alpha right now, and it’s invite-only until they get to beta (for creators; anyone can make a reader account! but they haven’t set up a way to browse comics without direct links yet so) but honest to god it’s already blowing every other site I’ve used clean out of the water. And the staff has been really kind and responsive to us proposing fixes or changes! I will always defend individual websites as being the best option for an indie comic, but everybody’s gotta start somewhere and we NEED something that isn’t Tumblr or Webtoon to fill this role; this site feels a lot more like a symbiotic relationship than any of the other staples available for new creators right now. If you’re a comic reader and you want to see your favorite comics on Dillyhub I’d suggest keeping an eye on this site and once it’s live start poking them to look into it, and if you’re a creator follow their social media and hop in when they open up for anybody to join. I would LOVE to see this site take off as a viable option for hosting and reading comics.

Thanks for reading all this! I haven’t quite finished setting up yet, but if you want to poke around a project/creator page for yourself mine is here have at it. As things progress I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but since I’m usually so aggressively negative about places like this I just wanted to give some credit where it was due. fucking finally.

#long post #i want this site to obliterate webtoon so fucking bad lmfao

[kyidyl]

Kyidyl Does Archaeology - Part 5

(as per usual, all these posts are collected under the KyidylCL tag)

Pottery and shErds

So, what are we talking about today? Well, I think the next thing is gonna be pottery.  This is where we’re gonna talk about time, space, and dating a site.  Because most people think that the only way to date an archaeological site is via C14.  That’s not true, and actually we don’t always do it.  C14 dating can have some problems, including that the wood used in the fire is likely older than the time in which it was cut down and burned.  It also only goes back 50,000 years, so anything older than that won’t have any carbon isotopes (it’ll have all decayed), and we have to use other things that are more expensive.  And c14 testing itself is expensive - we sent in 2 samples and it was around $500/sample so we spent about $1000 on testing.  Instead, there are other ways to date a site and one of the most accurate is pottery.  

See, like all other kinds of material culture (AKA, stuff people leave behind.  Non-material culture is like...song and story and stuff like that.), pottery follows stylistic trends and trends in how it was made.  And it does this both regionally and chronologically.  Which is great, because if we find bits of one type of pottery we know is made in one place in a settlement in another place, then we know the two people traded with each other.  But I have to explain something else so that determining a date from pottery makes sense.  

Every area of the country has what’s called a “type site” for a given period of time.  In undergrad I was lucky enough to actually get to work on the type site for the Safety Harbour period, which is Weedon Island....ironically enough there’s a Weedon Island period and Weedon Island isn’t the type site for that period so uuuhhh...yeah it’s weird lol.  Anyway, a type site is a site that is considered stereotypical for a given time and place in history.  Usually they’re large and well-preserved, and they’re often the first sites found in that time period/area (but not always, which is how the above weirdness happened.). And so what happens is we dig ‘em and analyze the finds and do testing on those finds.  So now we know “hey, this kind of pottery comes from here and it is X years old”. Now you know when you find it in other places where and when it comes from.  This is all a very generalized explanation, but I think any more is like extraneous detail you don’t need.  Just know that things like type sites help us determine where and when stuff like pottery was made.  Lots of literature usually exists for type sites, but I actually can’t remember the type site for this area for this time period.  

We also use a term called “diagnostic”, which is used much as it is in medicine.  If we find a certain thing that was only made during a specific time period or in a certain place, then it’s diagnostic.  IE, a certain kind of pottery is diagnostic of the late, middle, or early Woodland.  The pottery we have at our site is diagnostic of the late Woodland.  Some of the lithics we thought might be a bit earlier, but honestly I think that was just misidentification by the site director bc we were in the field at the time.  Lastly, identifying pottery has a few components.  Color and decoration I think are easy to understand (they didn’t have glazes, but you can make different colored pottery by varying the composition of the clay and the temperature at which it is fired.). Paste and temper are the other two.  IDK how modern pottery is made, but old ass pottery is made with paste - the main body of the clay, the matrix that contains the temper - and temper. Temper is stuff they’d crush up and mix in to help it not break during firing and heating during normal use.  So we combine these factors to ID the pottery and thus the age of the site and trading habits of the people in question.  One last thing you need to understand about pottery - ancient people used pottery the way that we use disposable things.  They didn’t think it was like an important thing that had to keep safe.  They’d use it until it broke and then toss it in the garbage pit and make a new one.  So it’s really common and we find it all over the place, but TBH in the future pottery *won’t* be diagnostic anymore because our ceramics come in such a wide variety that we couldn’t possibly hope to narrow down time or place.  

Alright, so who wants pictures? You, of course.  Who *doesn’t* want pictures? Here’s some of the pottery we found: 

This is the larger shard that I found in the features I’ve talked about in previous installments.  You can see where I accidentally broke it. >.> Anyway it’s kind of unique bc of the light color outside and the black inside.  It’s like...idk, 4 or so inches long.  

This is a rim piece that I happened to find two matching sherds of.  I always check the rim pieces because the patterns on them usually make them easier to fit together.  Honestly I’ve got hundreds of pot sherds from this site and I don’t have the sanity to try and make pots from them.  

This is the outside and inside respectively of the largest piece we have.  TBH taking this thing out of its box and handling it makes me nervous because of how large it is - about the size of my hand, but I did include my earbuds for scale.  The black is charring from both firing and subsequent use, and it came out of the pit feature I’ve been talking about.  And do you wanna know the cool thing about the inner surface of pottery? Because they didn’t use glazes, the surface was porous and retains the unique chemical traces of what was made in them.  However, the vast majority of the time those kinds of tests aren’t done because archaeology as a whole is extremely underfunded and trace chemical analysis of pot residue is an expensive test requiring expensive equipment and expensive scientists.  Funnily enough I probably could do some of this testing bc I used to be premed and so I’ve taken a lot of chemistry and know how to read a mass spec thing, but I don’t have access to the chemicals or tools to do these kinds of tests.  Plus, they’re often destructive...which....I mean...there’s so much pottery that it doesn’t really matter if one piece gets destroyed but like you do still have to be careful *which* piece you destroy.  

Anyway, you also can see the striations on the outside piece, and that’s decoration on the pot.  It probably also helped with gripping it.  This is a piece of Shepardware, which is diagnostic of the late Woodland period in the Shenandoah valley. Here’s some more cool pottery: 

This is a random assortment of the kind of stuff we regularly pull out of the ground when it comes to pottery.  The most common kind we have is the orange on one side black on the other (3 upper rt pieces), whiteish (upper left 2), orange on both sides (lower left 3) and totally black (lower right 3).  All of ‘em are some variety of shepard or pageware.  You can see the texture on a lot of them, too.  We have a good mix of textured and untextured, and that’s why the composition of the pottery is more diagnostic than the decoration.  Frankly, people can and will put whatever design they think looks cool.  But they made that particular design by wrapping twine around the end of a flat stick and pressing it into the surface of the wet clay.  I also chose those two upper right pieces because they have really visible temper.  Here’s a side shot of one of them: 

You can see how big the bits are compared to my fingers (yeah, there’s dirt under my nails....I haven’t taken some tweezers to them yet after working on the car.). And...wait, I WAS going to try to describe this to you but then I was like “no, they deserve better” and I broke out my DSLR and my macro lens and took some pics.  Here are some macros of the temper: 

The white balance is a little off on the top one...the bottom one is more true to color (they aren’t the same piece of pottery, but they are a similar color).  So you can see that it’s crushed up limestone.  Pardon the depth of field on those...I had to open the aperture pretty wide to get one that wasn’t blurry bc I don’t exactly have bright lights in my room.  

Anyway....so that’s the pottery we’ve gotten at the site and what we can learn from it.  It’s going to take some time before we can start determining patterns and whatnot in regards to style, but we do have some evidence of trading here because some of the pottery we have is from the piedmont culture....

...wait, let me explain what that means.  When archaeologists need to describe a group of people who existed in a given place in a given time based on similarities in material culture regardless of ethnic and social grouping we call it a culture.  This is different than the standard meaning of the world culture, or even the way a cultural anthropologist would use the word.  So when I say the piedmont culture, I mean people that lived in the general area of the Piedmont plateau during the late woodland.  They were of varying tribes, languages, etc.  And we do this to describe the extant boundaries of cultural influence of particular trends in physical objects and not the social groupings of the humans in question.  So, for example, lots of people are familiar with the Clovis culture.  When archaeologists use this term we mean “these are the boundaries of the places we are finding physical objects in the group we’ve named Clovis” not “everyone in this area was a Clovis person”. Like no, obviously, they weren’t.  There were tons of social groups, tribes, etc. that were all distinct and different.  It’s a way of mapping cultural influence via physical objects to see how far they spread and who was using them.  

So, we have some piedmont stuff despite not being in the piedmont area, so we know that they were trading with those natives.  If you’re interested in more detail here, this is the VDHR resource I use for IDing pottery.  It looks like it came to visit you from the late 1990s, but the info is good and it’s easy to use. 

Anyway, that’s it for tonight.  Tomorrow is gonna be rocks and weird stuff, depending on how much I end up saying about rocks.  Probably not much bc we know how I feel about rocks.   ;) 

#kyidylCL #archaeology #science #pottery #native pottery #native americans #anthropology

[fondnesses]

roscoe’s notebook post

A while back I said I was going to write a post about the way I use notebooks for writing projects. This is the first of several posts about Writing Process I’ve been tossing around in my drafts for a little while as a result of conversations with friends, so bear with me.

I. Love. Notebooks. I genuinely would have to deeply overhaul my whole Process of writing anything on the longer side if I were to go paperless; I find physical paper pretty invaluable when I’m outlining, brainstorming, and researching, and I still probably write ¼-⅓ of all my actual content on paper first. (That proportion used to be a lot higher, but I’ve gotten better at being productive on a computer in recent years, which is great.) I’m a very visual person, so notebooks really help me visualize my ideas, story structure, etc. It’s very helpful to be able to use arrows and diagrams and physically strike things through, and the tactility is really soothing to me. If I show people my notebooks or talk about them, I often get a response like “this is so organized”, which is sort of true, but I have to stress that it’s “organization for a disorganized mind”; I can’t misplace ideas or notes if it all goes into the same physical object, vs. electronic notes, which are much more, like “Did I say that in a voice memo? PM it to myself on Discord? Leave it in a desktop sticky note? Write it directly into the Google Doc? Who knows! It’s lost to time!”. It’s very much an ADHD management strategy.

It helps that I’m a very neophyte stationery hobbyist and appreciate any excuse I have to use my pens, but I also will go off at any opportunity about how helpful I find them for writing projects, which is why I decided to just make a post about it. Right now I mostly use them for (fan and original) fiction projects, but I used a notebook for a very similar purpose when I was working on my undergrad thesis, and I have a slightly different but equally necessary-to-me approach to notebooks I use at work.

My typical structure for a notebook that’s devoted to one project only looks like this:

I always leave the first couple pages blank so I can go back and retroactively index bujo-style. I don’t always actually do the index, because sometimes I get too lazy, but I like having those blank pages there to give me the option. I also usually put epigraphs/inspo quotes on the first page.

After that, there’s often (but not always, I’ll talk about it) a couple pages at the start where I’m frantically jotting down loose brainstorming ideas before they've coagulated into a story structure. Just, like, vomiting into the void.

Stemming out of that, I usually write out about like 5-10 pages of outline-style notes in chronological order, laying out all the main story beats and charting out the story trajectory. This will inevitably get revised and rewritten many times, but I find the process of writing these wide-angle synopses really useful for dislodging ideas, making connections re: thematic threads, etc. from my brain.

I’ll devote a couple pages after that to specific things like "sex scene brainstorming", "random scene ideas/minor details that don't have a clear place in the outline right now but I'll turn to for inspo later" [this is what I refer to as “bits” in one of the later photos], "page where I just outline the Motifs And Themes", "research notes", "to-do list", "stuff to check on a second pass", "things to put in the a/n and AO3 tags", etc.--the specifics vary with the story.

Then, I skip ahead to approx. halfway through the notebook and cordon off the rest of the pages to be “free writing” space, AKA writing of actual content rather than planning, with the expectation there will be no internal organization and I’ll transcribe to laptop as I go. Writing on paper feels less binding than typing something on a computer; it’s like a little secret kept with myself, and it doesn’t need to go anywhere or be seen by anyone if I decide I don’t like it. Setting aside pages in the back half of the notebook means that, as more things come up re: planning, I can go back and add those in the rest of the pages that were intentionally left blank. This is how I avoid (for the most part) having the whole thing be a jumbled mess where there’s no separation between the notes and the actual story writing; I learned this the hard way via the first notebook I’ll show you in a second. I’ve recently gotten really into using Muji sticky note tabs to label any pages/sections of particular import that don't want to have to refer back to in the index and would rather just flip to instantly.

I do use notebooks that aren’t specific to any one project, but those are much less organized and less worth sharing.

Before I look at more recent stuff, here are some selections from my notebook for the project that got me into writing longfic, my Golden Kamuy canon divergence AU (with apologies for the bad photos, my phone’s camera is trash). I worked on this from Sept 2018-July 2019. It was a learning experience in a lot of ways, and notebook utilization was one of those. I’ve always used notebooks for keeping track of writing projects, as I said earlier, but before this it was largely without much organization or structure; just total chaos. Having a physical notebook became really important for this project because it was a sprawling multichapter story with rotating POVs and a lot of historical research. I also learned a lot about what not to do with a notebook, personally, or at least things that don’t work so well (for me). This was a college ruled spiral-bound Decomposition Book, for the record.

By the time I bought a notebook for it I already had a (very basic) plot outline in mind, so I wasn’t doing that very initial ground-zero brainstorming in here; I was copying out of my phone’s notes app, basically, and then going from there. 

This is one of the first pages in this notebook; I wanted to visualize the relationship web between the four central characters in the story in terms of how they feel about one another. The two colours correspond to the POV characters (Sugimoto in orange, Ogata in pink), and I used this colour-coding throughout the notebook with highlighters, etc. to keep track of information that was more relevant to one character than the other. Tsurumi and Yuusaku aren’t POV characters, but they’re prominent in the story and their presence impacts the central relationship between Sugimoto and Ogata, and it was helpful to me to map out the emotional ecosystem, as it were.

(There are coffee stains all over this, because I wrote the vast majority of the story in coffee shops because I didn’t want to be around my roommates, lol. This is part of why I never do fiction writing in notebooks that are too nice, I get neurotic about needing to keep them tidy. I can’t use ones that are too shit though, either, so it’s a bit of a narrow window. I’ll talk more about brands and paper quality etc. later.)

As you can see, this is the first page of many I set aside specifically for jotting down different pieces of historical information relevant to my story. It’s about fictional characters who are members of an army division that existed in real life, and both the canon and my fic involve a high level of attention to detail with regards to which divisions were present for which battles, etc., as well as general historical details specific to the Russo-Japanese War setting--what did people eat in the trenches? What did they do to fill time? How did they get through the winter? What did third party observers have to say about the conditions? What were the specs of their weaponry (particularly important because one of the POV characters is a sniper and gun nut)? I did a lot of reading (and watching of antique gun collector Youtube videos... the things I do for love, eh), and it came in handy so many times, because it turns out it’s much easier to write trench warfare slice of life if you have factual details to pull from when you don’t know what to do with a scene! Imagine that!

This is the first of three “grid outlines” I made; this is a way I sometimes like to visualize a story outline all on one page, with the columns representing chapters and the squares within the columns representing sections/scenes within the chapters. As you can see, early on I was hoping to get this done in five or even FOUR chapters (whatmakesyouhaha.mp3), with POV switches happening internally within the chapters. This proved to be unwieldy for many reasons, so I revised the outline:

Here I’d come to terms with the fact this story was going to have a lot more chapters than I’d planned, and I rearranged things so that it would happen in ten, with each chapter belonging to only one POV character. This also needed revising later, and in the end the story looked a bit more like this (though it did in fact end up being twelve chapters, but only because Chapter Ten was like, 12k, and needed to be split in two chunks):

I must have remembered to bring my fineliners to the coffee shop this time, lol, because as you can see it’s properly colour-coded this time. This outline was made when I was already four posted chapters into the fic, which hopefully gives you a sense of the way in which I am sort of a planner and a pantser; I can’t get into a longer project without an outline, but the outline inevitably changes many times throughout writing and I often end up with a finished product that looks pretty different from what I was intending. My creative M.O. as always is Do The Maximum! Amount! Of! Work! Possible!

This is what a “free writing” page looks like, for me. In this notebook I didn’t set aside any specific spaces for free writing so it’s strewn throughout the notebook in a really disorganized way and I was constantly flipping through looking for bits I’d written and forgotten to transcribe, and I decided to be more organized in future as a result of that. If something’s crossed through, that means I transcribed it. As you can see, they’re often small sections, sometimes just a coupled decontextualized sentences. About 3/4 of what I write in a notebook makes it into the story, I’d say; some of it never goes anywhere, and that’s OK. I have less of an issue killing my darlings if they never make it off the paper page.

A very brief, top-down chapter outline, where the goal was not to get too bogged down in details and just to visualize the beats and pin down what they’re trying to accomplish. Chapters for this fic typically ran about 6k, and five or six scenes per chapter was pretty common, so the average scene length was about 1-1.25k words/scene. IDK why I called it storyboarding when I didn’t make drawings. (Margin numbers are to keep track of word count, since I was using a daily word count tracker while writing this.)

This page was, as titled, for keeping track of the various balls in the air when I was about 2/3-3/4 of the way through the story and really feeling the pressure with regards to tying up the various loose ends. This was... a struggle. I hadn’t ever written anything longish (this fic ended up just under 70k) that had an action plot before, let alone a canon divergence scenario where I had to engage with and explain away various canon plot elements so I could maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Now, I mentioned earlier that I learned various “things not to do” with my notebooks while working on that project. One of those lessons I learned is to be more realistic when assessing how big a project is likely to get, not least because I RAN OUT OF PAGES around the chapter 9-10 mark. In my defense though, that’s because I’d never written anything even half this long! But I know better now, and try not to be in denial. Finishing the notebook early was a way bigger problem than I’d anticipated, and was part of the reason the last few chapters took several grueling months to finish. The issue was that I needed to be able to use a notebook to maintain my workflow--attempting to do it only on a computer was dismal--but it seemed silly to start a notebook of a similar size to the one I’d finished (80pg, approximately B5 dimensions) when there was no way it would need that much space, especially since the reference pages, like the historical notes, didn’t need to be transcribed over. I was also pretty broke at the time and didn’t want to spend money unnecessarily, lol. I tried to get by using a Moleskine Cahier for a month or so because I had one lying around, but it was horrid; it was too small to be used comfortably, it wasn’t spiral-bound so it wouldn’t lay flat, the ghosting is terrible and I hate the way Moleskine paper feels, etc. Eventually I caved and went to Muji and bought a 30ish page A5 with closer to lay-flat binding, and I finished the story in there. I would take a comparative pic for you of the relative notebook sizes and include some of the scene staging diagrams, etc. I put in there, but I can’t find it :(

So I learned that specs really do matter, and it’s okay to be picky if the pickiness is going to make the difference between actually using a notebook or not. Things that are important to me in my notebooks:

Ruling (gotta have ruling, I can suffer through grid but blank or dot is a no-go)

Size (I can’t use anything smaller than at least a medium-large notebook, I find it claustrophobic and get miserly about page space)

Binding (twin ring is my preference because it looks and feels better than a classic spiral but has the same comfort of use with regards to bending the pages back to suit workspace size and laying flat with ease)

Paper quality and colour (I don’t like anything too slippery/smooth or with too much visible ghosting, and I strongly prefer an off-white paper to bleached paper--part of why I don’t use Decomposition Books anymore, the paper is scratchy and it’s too damn bleached!)

Pagecount relative to size of project

Portability (in non-COVID times; anything bigger than a B5 wouldn’t fit in the satchel I used to bring to work at my old job), etc.

But everyone’s taste is different in this respect, and the only way to figure out what works for you is through trial and error, I’m afraid. I also suspect I’m more neurotic and particular about the sensory experience of using a notebook than most people are, but I yam what I yam.

Now to talk about the notebooks for my current projects, where I’ve refined my approach somewhat. I’ve included less photos for these because they’re ongoing WIPs I don’t want to spoil completely, but I’ve tried to include some outline-type stuff to give you an idea.

My big bang fic is in the very ugly twin ring notebook on the right; I got it at a dollar store by my house because I needed something to work in and didn’t want to wait for an online order, but it’s been very serviceable for my needs. The paper isn’t even bad. The bigger notebook (B5) is my Sangcheng fic.

I wanted something with a lot of pages for this, because I knew it was going to be a long story, and for some reason the fact it’s smaller than my usual preference doesn’t bug me (I think it’s an A5?); it just fits this story, somehow. I’m not sure exactly how many sheets are in here but I’d guess about 150.

Because this notebook has upwards of 100 sheets, I made a lot of use of sticky-note tabs to label high-priority pages. The colour coding of these doesn’t mean anything, it was just whichever ones I had at hand at any given moment. These are those tabs from Muji I mentioned, I’m really obsessed with them--the shape makes them so much less obtrusive and more practical than conventional squares/rectangles OR flag shapes, IME.

My big bang story is nonlinear, so, similarly to what I did with colour coding for the two POVs for my GK fic, this story has two main colours corresponding to whether a given section takes place in the “before” or the “after” portions of the timeline, with blue as “after”, yellow as “before”. This is what the most current version of the outline looks like in there:

If you squint, you can see the alphanumeric notes in the top right of each section entry; I gave them each a code like “A3″ or “B5″ corresponding to their position in the story sequence (so, it goes A1, B1, A2, B2, etc., through to B9 and then the epilogue). [Unintentional that this schema overlaps with notebook size labeling and so is kind of confusing in the context of this post.] At first I was just keeping track of the sections via the highlighted titles, but it got confusing because I’d write down “Wedding” or “Yiling” in my notes and then refer to the notes later like “but there are multiple marriages?? and multiple scenes in Yiling??”. Stuff gets struck through with a straight line if it’s been written in a more-or-less complete form and crossed out with a squiggly line if it’s been cut from the outline or made redundant.

As I said earlier, I started out all the initial brainstorming for my Sangcheng fic in its notebook, instead of brainstorming it in someone’s DMs/my notes app/a voice memo/etc. and then transcribing it into the notebook in a somewhat more organized fashion, which is how my stories usually start out. Because of this, the first five-ish pages are basically just stream of consciousness rambling where I was trying to jot down every disconnected thought I had about the story concept. I don’t have photos for that because it’s too spoilerific for later developments in the fic, but I can show you some of the stages the outlines went through, once I was able to corral those initial notes into a story structure:

All the chapters in this fic have their own highlighter colour, so when I started trying to make sense of my initial brainstorm notes I just went through and highlighted stuff in the colour of the chapter it would make the most sense for, and then transcribed things more-or-less in chronological order into the relevant chapter outline. I later ended up rewriting all the chapter outlines AGAIN to refine them and divide them internally by the individual scenes, which makes them a lot more legible and less wall-of-text-y. They look like this now, with about four sheets per chapter:

Because this fic is on the longer side, I have some pages that are just for keeping track of other story elements, like this, where I refer back to whatever the fuck the “themes” are supposed to be whenever I forget what this fic is about:

It’s all about the visionboarding... Anyway, that’s most of what I have to offer, since most of these two notebooks is Forbidden Content.

With regards to brands/supplies, I really like this Kokuyo Campus Wide notebook that I’m writing Sangcheng in, it’s pretty perfect for me. I also like the B5 Muji twin rings, but those only come in 30 sheets, so I wouldn’t use it for anything above a ~20k project. The B5 Maruman Spiral Note 6.5mm ruled/80 sheet is another good one, though I wish it was twin ring instead of spiral. As you can tell, I like Japanese stationery brands because it’s easier to find decent paper quality and minimalist design without shelling out $$ than it is with American/European brands, at least IME. I like Rollbahns too. But honestly, I can usually find pretty serviceable random notebooks that aren’t brand-name from Asian dollar stores; it’s really not something where you need to shell out tons of money.

#notebooks #writing #idk how to tag this!

[the-astro-ace]

Okay but like your tags on that aroace "late bloomer" post was literally my exact thought process in high school/ middle school. (We're the same age) Like I was told I was a freak or a liar in middle school because when asked if I had a crush or had ever had a crush I said no. Of course then I picked a random guy I was friends with internally so that if I was ever asked again I would have one ready. NKw because of that I'm never even sure if my "crushes" are me just deciding that I have similar future plans as this guy and we're friends so I guess I can picture us living together in the future?

YEAH EXACTLY

I distinctly remember this one time in middle school I got asked “Who’s your celebrity crush?” and I distinctly remember thinking That’s...that’s not a thing???  That’s not a thing people do??  a) We’re too young, and b) how can you have a crush on people you’ve never met?? That makes no sense

(Those probably weren’t my exact thoughts but you get the point lol)

I answered truthfully that I didn’t have one

They, of course, called me a liar, and told me it was impossible for me not to have one

So I started racking my brain for an answer so they would lay off - all the while being like “Huh?? What do you mean I’m SUPPOSED to have one that’s just WEIRD”

Anyways, I think this was right around when the first Avengers movie came out, or was about to come out and only the first Thor was out, and I remembered seeing online all these posts about how Tom Hiddleston is an extremely kind person in real life.  Like there was the bit about how he brought soup for a reporter because they jokingly asked him for some on Twitter, and another where he lent someone his jacket because they were cold

So I just blurted out “TOM HIDDLESTON” because if you’re going to marry someone, marry someone who’s kind ya know??

They of course thought I was weird for that answer and immediately changed subjects alskdjfasdf

And I totally get what you mean about being unsure about attraction/crushes now.  To this day I’m not sure if I am just an a-spec wlw who’s had the rare crush this whole time and just didn’t notice, or if all the aro/ace exclusionism was getting to me and I started forcing “crushes” on other women so I could still feel like I unequivocally belonged in the queer community :/  It’s a nightmare

Anyways, thanks for your response 💖💖💖 I frequently get “But are you suuuUUURE???” moments regarding my sexuality, but hearing that other people can relate truly helps 💖

[skylights422]

@ace-and-aro-wlw-positivity created a Q&A for aspec authors/writers, and as an aspec author, I am excited to participate and answer as many of their questions as I can. Under a cut since it became really outrageously long.

1. What was your inspiration for your character(s)? Are they modeled on yourself, a person that you know, or a character that’s already been established?

Typically I’d say my characters are a mix of general inspiration from other stories/characters and then bits and pieces taken from myself. I try not to make any of them like a clone of myself or another character, try to mix it up, possibly with mixed success but that is the goal.

2. How much, if any, has your character(s) changed since they were first created? What caused this change?

Oh wow, okay I have characters I still use from grade school and middle school, and those characters have changed/grown a lot. Most notoriously (to me) though are my two fellas Euphranor and Kadri. I created them while daydreaming in middle school while watching those science videos in class about how I could make a more parody-like version of said videos, Kadri being the energetic and comically sadistic teacher and Euphranor being the constantly irritated and foul-tempered student. The core of their designs and personalities haven’t totally changed (Euph is still a hot-head and Kadri still likes to troll him), but they’ve become far more nuanced as characters as their story become more involved and serious. They’ve also become softer characters, with Euph having a Heart of Gold and Kadri being a bit morally grey but generally compassionate and friendly. I think the cause of this change and others comes from a mix of things, for one I simply got older and what I wanted out my characters changed a bit. But also I think it’s because I spent so much time with those characters in my head that I couldn’t help but develop them more fully, which in turn made me want to give them a good story. Also, everyone is definitely more queer now then how they started, largely because I became more aware and comfortable with my own queer identity and spent more time in queer spaces (though with Euph I actually just realized he had to be gay because I every het relationship I envisioned for him fell totally flat and yet imagining him as having crushes on guys just seemed to work better/make more sense, and that was an earlier decision).

4. Do you intend on publishing your story one day? Why, or why not?

I definitely do! I have many, many stories I want to publish, as books or comics or tv shows or films. I’ve always wanted to publish some of writing since it’s one of my main passions and have always taken inspiration from the stories I consumed. I just love writing and would want to be able to do it as my main career, the key will just be figuring out how to focus on one project long enough to finish it. xD

5. Surprise fact! Give a random fact about your character(s), whether it’s their favorite color, food, or even song!

Euphranor loves to sing! He hums to calm himself down and even full on sings to vent his feelings sometimes. Kadri loves literature and video games, and blackberry pie is his favorite food.

6. Admit it, you have a folder on your computer of the various types of picrews you’ve created for your character(s). Would you mind posting a few (or five)?

*VIBRATES* MY TIME HAS COME. I absolutely have way too many picrews of my fellas so I won’t post them all, just two each for the core four of my main novel project. First, Euphranor:

(yes he is a Hufflepuff)

Kadri:

(also since I dragged the Hogwarts houses into this Kadri is Ravenclaw)

Ena:

(I put her in Gryffindor)

And finally, Fiera:

(Right now I have her in Slytherin. She could also be in Ravenclaw though)

7. Time to get serious for a bit. There’s been heavy debate on having non-human characters identify as ace, aro, non-binary, etc., but never actual humans. As someone who’s aspec, how would you explain to someone who’s allo why this can be and is seen as hurtful?

I mean, as a sci-fi fan I definitely love if the non-human characters are queer coded, but it’s definitely important to include human representation as well, and I think there are a few simple reasons for that. One is that queer people are, in fact, humans, and therefore our stories deserve to be told as they are in reality as well as how they could be in fiction. The other is only writing us as inhuman implies you consider our identities as fictitious or too strange for a human to have, and queer people already have to deal with other forms of erasure and invalidation in real life. (Also, not everyone is a fan of sci-fi/fantasy, and they should still be able to read stories where they can see themselves)

8. It’s a sad reality that many stories in mainstream media don’t have characters that are aspec, not to mention without resorting to harmful stereotypes. Besides there being nothing wrong with IDing as aspec, why did you choose to have your character ID as such? What would you tell other authors who’re interested in writing characters that are aspec, but are afraid of offending the community?

I have a huge list of aspec characters, which definitely started happening more once I was aware of my own asexuality (and later, aromanticism), since I realized that I could make my own aro and ace characters and then just went wild with it lol. It’s also easier for me to write since I can actually draw from personal experience somewhat for it. Beyond representation having aro and ace characters also allows you to explore more facets of human emotions/the human experience, so that’s always fun.

As for how I would advise allies looking to write a-spec characters, my main advice would be to remember that we are an incredibly diverse group of people, and so while no one a-spec character will resonate with every a-spec reader, an a-spec character written in good faith will definitely speak to some of us. Write them as an character first, and when it comes to things like how their attraction does or doesn’t work and what they want out of relationships, figure out what works best for them. Really, if you’re concerned your character would be offensive in some way you can always make a post asking about it, many of us are happy to offer constructive advice and appreciate that someone is wanting to put in the effort to write about our experiences. Reading or listening to anecdotes from an array of a-spec people is also a good way of getting ideas of how to portray us, and there are various resources for that (the tags, AUREA collects anecdotes from arospec individuals, and probably more than I can think of offhand)

9. If you’re comfortable with sharing, what is your characters’ identity? Do they use any microlabels? Does theirs reflect your own?

Unsurprisingly I have many characters who are aroace (Fiera is one of them), and Ena is bisexual and gray-aromantic. Kadri was originally supposed to just be bi/pan but has become increasingly aspec, will they end up gray-aro as well as grey-ace? Will they end up as a pan oriented aroace? I don’t know yet, but they sure are a pan a-spec. My most recent project has exclusively aro-spec protagonists, Valentine is aroace, Cedar is demiromantic, Raelene is cupioromantic, and then Clematis and Hadyn are presently just Aro and might stay that way. My aroace characters are often styled after my own aroace experiences, while other a-spec characters aren’t as much.

11. Why do you think that not just representation is important, but GOOD representation? Can you offer any examples?

Well, I think there are a few ways to make ‘good rep’. There is the ‘this character helps bring awareness/educate about the community’ and then there’s ‘this character just resonates with certain a-spec people a lot’, and the main reason I think it’s important is because rep should be for the people they’re representing. So if rep hurts the community or totally fails to be relatable to anyone who’s actually a-spec, then it missed the whole point and is doing just as much to leave the community feeling left in the dust as no rep. Of course things do get complicated when the community is divided on whether the rep is good or not, which I imagine will be a common occurrence, and many examples of rep probably fall into the grey area between Good and Bad, but generally people should aim to tell stories that will help more than hinder the people you are telling your story about. (Although I also think that the long term end goal is to get to the point where there is enough representation that it doesn’t matter if some of it is ‘bad’ or not, since I feel like that is the true state of normalization, but that is sadly not yet the case)

12. What’s the genre of your most recent story? Do you always write in this genre? If so, what other works do you have? If not, why did you pick it?

My most recent story (with Valentine) is fantasy, inspired by shoujo style anime series like Cardcaptor Sakura, while Euph’s story is more dystopian urban fantasy? His exact genre has shifted around a lot and will probably continue to do so. In general, most of my works are fantasy in some way or another. A few are more sci-fi or horror based, but definitely the majority are fantasy whether that be magical girl type stories, urban fantasy, superheroes, or dark fantasy.

14. What’s a brief biography of your character? Is their history, personality, and/or looks similar to your own?

I’m going to go with Fiera here. The short version of her backstory is that she and her older brother were born to neglectful parents, and while their grandmother was attentive emotionally she also lived far away. Her brother discovered magic, long thought forgotten, but killed himself shortly after, leaving Fiera alone and confused. She then made a point to dedicate herself to studying the theory and history of magic in the hope that she may someday understand why her brother would take his own life so suddenly like that. She has a down to earth personality and is very observant, and has a great deal of ambition and focus for tasks. She naturally has a more lighthearted and curious personality, but has become more somber since the death of her brother. While she always struggled with sustaining personal relationships, it’s only recently she started using her power of observation to be more manipulative and always keep a cool, pleasant demeanor. She has a love for fashion and sewing, as well as an interest in chemistry.

She isn’t really based on me at all backstory or appearance wise, and only slightly takes after me personality wise. Our main similarity is that we both can be quietly observant and don’t tend to get outwardly angry very often, and that we are both aroace. But I am nowhere near as focused as her, am terrible at lies/manipulation, and have different interests. I’m also way more prone to energetic rants and blunt statements than she is.

15. What are the themes of your story? Is it a lighthearted adventure, or are we talking deep, ocean-sized levels of angst? Why, or why not, did you choose them?

The tone of Euph’s story is kind of all over the place due to how often I’ve tweaked it, but there are certainly oceans of angst for all the protagonists. There’s just also decided remnants of the wacky humor from when the story was predominantly a comedy, and a lot more scenes of the characters just relaxing or goofing off than might be typical in a high tension drama adventure. My story with Valentine is generally much more lighthearted, though there will be some deeper moments for character development (and also because I want it to have a slightly gothic vibe, just Because)

16. How long have you been writing? Has your style changed from when you first began to now? What are some tips you’d give to those who’re interested in writing a story of their own, be it professionally or as a hobby?

I’ve been writing in some capacity just about as long as I can remember, and so my style has definitely taken various shifts depending on how old I was and what I was taking as my main inspiration at the time. Sometimes I went for more sarcastic and whimsical narration regardless of the events happening of the story, sometimes I went for a more quick modern-ish style, sometimes I would focus more or less on descriptions or dialogue. I don’t really know where I’m at right now though.

What I would advise to anyone wanting to sit down and write is to be patient and kind with yourself. Nine times out of ten what sounds epic in your head will come out at first as clunky and all over the place. But that is pretty much the whole purpose of first drafts; the clunky first draft crawls so the second draft may walk so the third draft may walk a little faster so the final draft may run. The other thing I would advise is to absolutely experiment, and see what works best for you. There is every kind of writing advice out there imaginable, much of it contradictory, so really you just have to mess around with styles and perspective and dialogue and see what happens, which stuff you liked and which stuff you didn’t.

17. What’s your process for writing? Do you plan your story out first, write whatever you want then edit later, or both? How might this help others?

My writing process is pretty much a mishmash of writing whatever comes to me, then planning, then writing, then using a bunch of character building exercises to have fun but make no progress in the plot, then neglect the project for months, then write some more or maybe plan. I don’t know how much this would help others, though I have found when I set goals with deadlines and some external pressure (nanowrimo, reward system implanted by friends, etc) I am far more productive, so perhaps that is something others could try if they struggle with staying on track?

18. Your book’s become quite popular, easily reaching the New York Times Bookseller list, and now, you’ve been picked to lead a writing workshop. It goes swimmingly, and afterward, someone comes and tells you that your book not only inspired them to write a story of their own, but also helped them discover and accept their identity. What’s your reaction?

Mostly I would just be flabbergasted, but also extremely pleased and honored to have been able to provide any kind of help or assistance to my readers.And I would feel very happy for the person, since that sort of inspiration is great to come by.

19. Are there any published stories out there that feature aspec characters that you also read? Do you have any suggestions?

Unfortunately not that I can think of! I am peripherally aware of some ace characters, but they aren’t in stories I personally consume. I hope to find more though!

20. Just for fun, write down a paragraph of your most recent writing. It can be an action-packed scene, some witty dialogue, or a colorful description that you really enjoyed. (Be sure to properly tag any possible triggers!)

Well, my most recent finished work would be the clunky first draft of my novel. So, here’s a silly conversation that entertained me to write:

Once they had bought the food, they went back to the park to eat. 

“You know, Fiera, I have come to a realization.” Kadri said.

“Oh? What’s that?” Fiera asked.

“Store snacks are not as filling as restaurant food, nor as refined, but they are decidedly addictive.” he said, munching on Twizzlers.

“Yep. That’s what makes them store snacks. Plus, I couldn’t get any really nice stuff. I’m not made of money.” Fiera explained.

“Which brings me to my next question, how exactly are you financing our meals? You don’t seem to work a job of any kind.” Kadri said. Fiera was almost surprised that he knew about jobs, but decided not to ask about it. 

“You’re right, I don’t. But my parents leave me about sixty bucks a week so that they can do what they want without me starving to death in their absence. After yesterday and just now, I’m down to like eight bucks, and the next payment comes in three days, so after this stash goes it's dollar store snacks only.” Fiera explained.

“I see. Fascinating. And these drinks you bought us, why are they vitamin drinks?” Kadri said,looking over a vitamin water curiously.

“Because we definitely aren’t going to get any vitamins from chips and candy.”  Fiera said simply.

“There is logic to that, I suppose.” he said. There was silence for a few moments.

“Um… Kadri?” Fiera said after a while.

“Yes, Fiera?” Kadri said.

“You know you can’t eat a whole bag of Twizzlers in one go, right?”  Fiera said.

“I don’t see why not. If it is not going to give me the nutrients I need, it may as well provide me with the maximum level of pleasure it is capable of.” Kadri said.

“Yeah, but you’ll get sick. And we have limited supplies.” Fiera countered. Kadri looked at the bag of Twizzlers in alarm.

“These are poisonous in large doses!?” he exclaimed.

“What? No, not poisonous, they just make you sick because they’re candy. All candy does that if you keep eating it.” Fiera said.

“Commoners lead dangerous lives, it would seem. I shall never forget this betrayal.” He said to the bag of Twizzlers, putting it down and taking the vitamin water instead. 

#Arospec Awareness Week #aromantic #writing #non-fandom #asaw2020

[nikatyler]

Felt like doing some replies the ~ old fashioned ~ way. I should be packing, but I don’t wanna. One good thing about this semester is that I don’t have classes on Monday morning, which means I don’t have to go to Prague on Sunday. But I’ll be once again going home late on Friday -_- Oh well. Maybe I could skip the lecture every once in a while to go home on Thursday afternoon.

I’m scared. Not really of what I’ll have to learn because I know that even if it’s difficult, I’ll probably get it in my brain in the end. Somehow. I’m more scared that once again, I’ll be left alone. I haven’t really found a stable friend group. I mean, I talk to some people sometimes, but I wouldn’t call it a friendship. One friend that I thought I could rely on doesn’t even bother saying hello to me anymore. I don’t know what I did to him, he just stopped talking to me. But maybe it’s for the best. Even when we still talked, I couldn’t believe how judgemental he was, and I often wondered if he talks about me like that too when I can’t hear it. He probably did. Oh well, I’ll see what I can do. I hope I’ll run into someone who is kinda like my best friend from high school.

As for sims stuff, I know I still owe some things to some people and I feel bad about it. You’ll get it eventually. I’m actually looking forward to doing it too. Makeovers are fun. I’d also like to release some more sims, I have one more sim dump and then some old legacy characters I want to share, plus some BC contestants that didn’t make it. They like to get eliminated in the first rounds.

Also, thanks for the comments on my mental health update post. I’ll see how this turns out and if it doesn’t get any better (I’m kinda hoping that better weather brings better mood, it worked before), I’ll start looking for a therapist or something. No offense to my parents but talking to them about this didn’t help in a slightest. They just don’t get it. And I swear I’m not reverting back to the “I’m an edgy misunderstood teenager” phase. Even though “edgy misunderstood teenager” is an aesthetic I still live for. Whatever that means.

And thanks for the tips on the laptop post. I’ll keep them in mind and I’ll probably ask again when the time comes and I actually buy a new one.

Ahh...I guess that’s it? Replies under the cut. As per usual, they’ll probably be the shorter part of this post, but oh well.

abysims  replied to your photoset  “Let’s find Lilith Vatore some love! In my game, I’ve had Lilith in a...”

Honestly Cassandra and Lilith would be amazing (... In my Glimmerbrook Academy story Cass is actually gonna have a huge crush on Lilith so I'm voting for that, yas!)

Ooooh that sounds great! Also, I’ll have a post announcing the results of the post coming up later, either today or tomorrow, but...spoiler alert: Cassandra might have won ;)

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your post “Simmer - Get to Know”

Lol this thing with Mermaids made me remember that when my friend and I were like 12 years old, a 6-year-old made her a "proposal" and we answered him that she'll marry him when he buys her a house by the sea in Prague

Omg sea in Prague sounds kinda cool, my faculty would be so close to the beach *-* Haha but at the same time it’s kinda terrifying, where would the sea come from? From the north? From the south? Would that mean my home doesn’t exist? Or, actually, considering my town was built on a big hill, would that mean I live on an island? And which part of Prague would be under the sea and which one would stay?

Sorry, I got distracted thinking of this AU where my country actually has access to the sea :D But we used to have it, back in like I think 12th or 13th century. We’re wayyyy smaller now.

amuhav replied to your post “Me, looking up some specs of my current laptop: you're...you're...”

If it's anything like me with my first 'gaming' laptop, the store clerk basically straight up lied to me about how good it was, and I was too young and naive to know better �� sims 3 almost burnt that thing to a crisp ������

Lmao I have a similar story with my first laptop, we were told that it has this super amazing graphic card...and it wasn’t amazing at all, as I later learned when my laptop broke.

amuhav replied to your photoset “Sims Moodboard Challenge I was tagged by @blurrypxls,...”

Oh no... don't make me want to go back to pinterest and do more of these �� They're ADDICTIVE

THEY ARE! I haven’t done much today, but I’ve spent a lot of time there all through this last week.

amuhav replied to your photo “I need to stop. This is more addictive than scrolling through memes....”

Pssst, not to enable or anything, but Picasa 3 has this nice feature where you can take a bunch of pics and it makes them into a nice collage. That's how I made mine, and then used them as my desktop backgrounds ��

I think I’ll use Photoshop, like I do for everything else, but thanks for giving me an idea for my new background! I used to have my sims or some other characters set as a background, but now that I take my laptop to school I feel a bit uncomfortable with that, so since October I’ve had this kinda boring background and I’ve been meaning to change it into something nicer, I just didn’t know what to put there. Now I do.

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “How dare you pretend you’re Father Winter?” Father Winter:...”

Holy crap, Sunset is a lot more buff than I ever realized. Those arms! ��

Yup. That’s because she has to get her Athletic skill higher for work. I think her muscle slider might be at max, actually!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Father Winter: “That’s it! You’re going on my Naughty List. Your...”

How could she not with with muscles like that?? Damn his Christmas magic!

Next time we should just call Caleb. I mean, he defeated Grim Reaper with no problem, surely Father Winter won’t be any more difficult for him!

fataleromeo replied to your photoset “Sunset: “Okay, cool. You won’t give us gifts but I have a special one...”

Lmaoooooo, get him, Sunset! ������

He deserves it

asplashofsims replied to your photo “~ daylight”

Cute picture! ♡ I hope you feel better soon and omgg winx club, it's my guilty pleasure for sure hahah all the childhood memories��

I love Winx Club so much. It’s a little ridiculous and the plot holes are terrible (and don’t let me talk about anything after season 4, those are not my Winx D:), but I can’t let it go.

blubrich replied to your post “I forgot how traumatizing Toy Story 3 was ��”

Especially the ending! ��

YES. I remember the whole cinema was crying.

Also, Toy Story always unpacks this weird guilt in me haha. Because as a child, naturally I was like “I would NEVER abandon my toys, I’ll keep them forever!”. And now...they’re in boxes...under my bed and in the basement...some of them I gave away or to my younger sister, who then also gave some away because she’s fifteen now. I still have my plushies and teddy bears in my bed though, it would be too empty without them :D

silverspringsimmer replied to your audio post “(via...”

I love Within Temptation and they got me into heavier music later, too!

I don’t even remember how I found them. I was just bored of the music I was listening to all the time back then, so I clicked through playlists and stuff on Spotify and somehow I landed on their page, I guess. And I immediately fell in love.

tiny-tany-thaanos replied to your audio post “(via...”

Oh this song was the first song of this bad which I heard! It was also 5-6 years ago.though I do not listen to them often these days.

I think the first song I heard was What Have You Done, which I liked and still like very much, but then I heard this one and went kinda crazy because it just sounded so epic and exactly what my poor slightly depressed fifteen years old soul needed. In one day, I completely switched from pop to metal and it took me a few years to appreciate my old favourite music again. (I know that I say all the time that I’m a Taylor Swift stan, but actually I only really started LOVING her music again last year.)

I’ve always thought that it’s kinda funny that in my Music class, for the first semester I prepared a project about Taylor Swift. In the second semester, that changed, the old pop loving Ronnie was dead, and my new project was about Within Temptation :D But I remember that I was actually upset that day, I chose to show my classmates the video of What About Us and they didn’t appreciate it. And then after me, my other classmate had a project about some singer who had this weird song about getting high. They wanted to replay it. I was so bitter, in my head I was like “this song that I showed you has an interesting meaningful message and you’d rather listen to a song about drugs, how dare you?! You’re absolutely terrible!”

Yeah. I mean, I get it today, but I was so, so bitter.

amuhav replied to your audio post “(via...”

I recently found out they had a new album out (and Nightwish had a new single out too ��) and early 2000s emo teenage me immediately surfaced and threw money at my screen!

Ahhhh I’ve basically had Noise on repeat since it came out, I love it so much! And the video is cool too. I can’t wait to hear the whole album. Nightwish never disappoints, I hope I’ll one day get to see them live. I’ve had a few chances but then it never worked out.

#replies #abysims #tiny-tany-thaanos #amuhav #fataleromeo #asplashofsims #blubrich #silverspringsimmer

[diguerra-moved]

̗̀  world of warcraft player stats  ̖́-

A Q&A meme for World of Warcraft players! Fill in your information (or add an N/A if you don’t want to look up the answer!), bold the relevant answers where applicable, and tag your friends! Please copy and paste the meme into a new post.

MAIN

Faction: Alliance Race: Night Elf Class: Demon Hunter Favoured Specialisation: Havoc Primary Professions: Herbalism is the only one I’ve ever done lol Secondary Professions: --

ALTS

Number of alts: 8 kansdjfkf that are mostly just there forgotten. The only 120 alt I have is my Nightborne Race/Spec of alts: Night Elf Rogue (which was my first but then I dropped it rip), Nightborne Mage, Void Elf Priest, Night Elf Demon Hunter, Blood Elf Death Knight, Blood Elf Hunter, Night Elf Death Knight and a Troll Druid bc I was bullied into making something that wasn’t an elf

COLLECTIONS

Number of mounts: 22 Favourite mount: The Lucid Nightmare Number of toys: 14 Favourite toy: Dark Ranger’s Spare Cowl Number of pets: 34 Favourite pet: Emmigosa or Lil’ Nefarian Favourite title: the Light of Dawn Rarest item: I have no idea Do you still have an item that is no longer used? (ie. sigils, spellstones, etc.): I begun playing like, yesterday, so nope Mount/toy/pet you are trying to get: Ashes of Al’ar ... Kael’thas pls... I just want the pretty phoenix...

ACHIEVEMENTS

Achievement points: 2,695 Achievement you are most proud of: None really, I don’t even have that many so Double Agent aksjdnfakjnsf Achievement you have that can’t be acquired anymore: Only the Birthday ones probably Achievement/s you are currently working on: Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder pt 2 rip Number of exalted reputations: 2 asdnfjkasnfdkjadsn

PVP & PVE

Favourite battleground: I haven’t done PVP at all lol Least favourite battleground: -- Favourite brawl: -- Least favourite brawl:  -- Favourite dungeon: I like Legion dungeons... Black Rook Hold and Cathedral of Eternal Night... and Seat of the Triumvirate.. idk... Least favourite dungeon: Violet Hold or Gnomeregan or Utgarde Pinnacle Favourite raid: I’ve never done raids because I’m afraid of people lol But from soloing or watching people do it, Black Temple and Nighthold Least favourite raid: I did 1 small part of it in the Anniversary event but I hated it so Hyjal Summit Favourite quest/quest chain: Suramar is probably my favorite questline c’: I really love Sylvanas’ quest chain in Silverpine Forest too  Least favourite quest/quest chain: Right now I have to say Mechagon because it’s the worst and I have to go there everyday to fly Favourite zone: Suramar... I really love Suramar... Did I mention I love Legion and Suramar? Least favourite zone: Silithus... I didn’t like most BC zones when leveling either... or stuff that’s reminiscent of Classic akjfnjkfnskn 

LORE

Favourite expansion: Legion bless Favourite moment in canon: this is difficult rip Maiev telling everyone Tyrande died is gold though Favourite 5 canon characters: Tyrande, Alleria, Illidan, Sylvanas, Thalyssra and Alex are tied I couldn’t decide on only one of them Least favourite 5 canon characters: Malfurion, Turalyon, Calia, Saurfang, hmmm idk who else probably an orc I don’t like orcs rip Expansions played live: Warcraft I | Warcraft II | Warcraft III | World of Warcraft | Burning Crusade | Wrath of the Lich King | Cataclysm | Mists of Pandaria | Warlords of Draenor | Legion | Battle for Azeroth Encyclopedias: Chronicle Volume 1 | Chronicle Volume 2 | Chronicle Volume 3 (I’ve read bits of them, but haven’t read any entirely) Novels: Dawn of the Aspects | War of the Ancients: The Well of Eternity | War of the Ancients: The Demon Soul | War of the Ancients: The Sundering | Rise of the Horde | The Last Guardian | Tides of Darkness | Beyond the Dark Portal | Day of the Dragon | Lord of the Clans | Of Blood and Honor | Arthas: Rise of the Lich King | Cycle of Hatred | Illidan | Night of the Dragon | Stormrage | The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm | Wolfheart | Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects | Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War | Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde | Traveler | Traveler: The Spiral Path | War Crimes | Before the Storm Short stories: Death From Above | Apocrypha | The War of the Shifting Sands | Road to Damnation | Cut Short | Code of Rule |  Blood of the Highborne | Trade Secrets of a Trade Prince | Unbroken | The Judgment | The War Effort | In the Shadow of the Sun| Glory | Heart of War | Lord of His Pack | Fire and Iron | Seeds of Faith | Edge of Night | As Our Fathers Before Us | Prophet’s Lesson | Blood of Our Fathers | The Trial of the Red Blossoms |  Li Li’s Travel Journal | Charge of the Aspects | Over Water | Quest for Pandaria | Bleeding Sun | The Strength of Steel | The Blank Scroll | The Jade Hunters | The Untamed Valley | Hellscream | Dark Mirror | A Good War | Elegy Comics: Blackhand | Blood and Thunder | Ashbringer | Death Knight | Dragon Hunt | Shadows of Ice | Ghostlands | The Sunwell Trilogy | The Comic | Legends | The Shadow Wing | Mage | Pearl of Pandaria | Shaman | Dark Riders | Curse of the Worgen | Bloodsworn | Gul'dan and the Stranger | Twilight of Suramar | A Mountain Divided | | Fault Lines | Son of the Wolf | The Speaker | Reunion | Three Sisters | Mechagon Audio dramas: A Thousand Years of War | The Tomb of Sargeras

OR

Alliance or Horde? Alliance PVE or PVP? PvE Raids or dungeons? Dungeons Battlegrounds or arenas? Neither kasnjdfakjsndf Classic or retail? Retail Ranged or melee? Melee Tank, heals, or DPS? DPS Search for spoilers or wait for things to unfold? Look for some spoilers, as anyone who’s followed me during datamining time knows lol Sell items on the AH one-at-a-time or in a stack? Stack

UNCATEGORISED

When did you start playing? By the time BFA begun, but I wasn’t playing BFA yet Owned memorabilia: Illidan’s funko pop Favourite world event: Hallow’s End Add-ons you can’t live without: I have no add-ons Things to do to kill time: Achievements | Reputation grinds | PVP | Mount hunting | Pet collecting | Play the auction house

Tagged by: @fatesblades​ c: Tagging: @aen-consilium @perspicacicus @legendariia and idk who else to tag aksdfjkasndf steal if you want!

#I'm a noob now you all know #* out of character: the mun / JUST YOUR LOCAL ANXIOUS NERD.

[weavefate]

world of warcraft player stats  ̖́-

A Q&A meme for World of Warcraft players! Fill in your information (or add an N/A if you don’t want to look up the answer!), bold the relevant answers where applicable, and tag your friends! Please copy and paste the meme into a new post.

MAIN

Faction: Alliance  Race: Night Elf Class: Druid Favoured Specialisation: Balance  Primary Professions: skinning & leather working Secondary Professions: none 

Faction: Horde Race: Blood Elf Class: Mage Favoured Specialisation: Frost Primary Professions: Mining and jewelry crafting  Secondary Professions: none (lazy lol)

ALTS

Number of alts: too fucking many  Race/Spec of alts: Blood elf/Havoc Demon Hunter, Human/Destruction Warlock, Draenei/Arcane mage, Draenei/Frost DK,  Draenei/Mistweaver Monk and Blood Elf/Beast master hunter  

COLLECTIONS

Number of mounts: 134 Favourite mount: Lucid Nightmare (I never want to do it again. Not even for $200 dollars. It fucking sucks! I used three pieces of paper drawing a map and the maze along took me 4 hours)  Number of toys: 31 Favourite toy: Blazing Wings  Number of pets: 188 Favourite pet: All of my dragons but Emmigosa holds a special place in my heart Favourite title: Vengeance incarnate  Rarest item: idfk Do you still have an item that is no longer used? (ie. sigils, spellstones, etc.): probably not Mount/toy/pet you are trying to get: Mounts are pureblood fire hawk & Raven Lord

ACHIEVEMENTS

Achievement points: 7,185 Achievement you are most proud of: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Achievement you have that can’t be acquired anymore: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Achievement/s you are currently working on: Mountain o’ mounts (I need one more!) Number of exalted reputations: *sweats nervously* 

PVP & PVE

Favourite battleground: Don’t care Least favourite battleground: Isle of Conquest Favourite brawl: Don’t know Least favourite brawl: Don’t know Favourite dungeon: scholomance Least favourite dungeon: Grim Batol Favourite raid: Least favourite raid:  Favourite quest/quest chain: Least favourite quest/quest chain: Every thing Dark Shore (cataclysm)  Favourite zone: Duskwood Least favourite zone: Dark Shore (cataclysm)

LORE

Favourite expansion: Legion Favourite moment in canon: Anytime I see Ysera Favourite 5 canon characters: Ysera, Tyrande, Varian, Lor'themar & Alexstrasza Least favourite 5 canon characters: Garrosh, Blackmoore, Xavius and others I’m sure Expansions played live: Warcraft I | Warcraft II | Warcraft III | World of Warcraft | Burning Crusade | Wrath of the Lich King | Cataclysm | Mists of Pandaria | Warlords of Draenor | Legion | Battle for Azeroth Encyclopedias: Chronicle Volume 1 | Chronicle Volume 2 | Chronicle Volume 3 Novels: Dawn of the Aspects | War of the Ancients: The Well of Eternity | War of the Ancients: The Demon Soul | War of the Ancients: The Sundering | Rise of the Horde | The Last Guardian | Tides of Darkness | Beyond the Dark Portal | Day of the Dragon | Lord of the Clans | Of Blood and Honor | Arthas: Rise of the Lich King | Cycle of Hatred | Illidan | Night of the Dragon | Stormrage | The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm | Wolfheart | Thrall: Twilight of the Aspects | Jaina Proudmoore: Tides of War | Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde | Traveler | Traveler: The Spiral Path | War Crimes | Before the Storm Short stories: Death From Above | Apocrypha | The War of the Shifting Sands | Road to Damnation | Cut Short | Code of Rule |  Blood of the Highborne | Trade Secrets of a Trade Prince | Unbroken | The Judgment | The War Effort | In the Shadow of the Sun| Glory | Heart of War | Lord of His Pack | Fire and Iron | Seeds of Faith | Edge of Night | As Our Fathers Before Us | Prophet’s Lesson | Blood of Our Fathers | The Trial of the Red Blossoms |  Li Li’s Travel Journal | Charge of the Aspects | Over Water | Quest for Pandaria | Bleeding Sun | The Strength of Steel | The Blank Scroll | The Jade Hunters | The Untamed Valley | Hellscream | Dark Mirror | A Good War | Elegy Comics: Blackhand | Blood and Thunder | Ashbringer | Death Knight | Dragon Hunt | Shadows of Ice | Ghostlands | The Sunwell Trilogy | The Comic | Legends | The Shadow Wing | Mage | Pearl of Pandaria | Shaman | Dark Riders | Curse of the Worgen | Bloodsworn | Gul'dan and the Stranger | Twilight of Suramar | A Mountain Divided | | Fault Lines | Son of the Wolf | The Speaker | Reunion | Three Sisters | Mechagon Audio dramas: A Thousand Years of War | The Tomb of Sargeras

OR

Alliance or Horde? Alliance  PVE or PVP? PvP Raids or dungeons? Raids Battlegrounds or arenas? Battlegrounds Classic or retail? Retail Ranged or melee? Ranged Tank, heals, or DPS? DPS Search for spoilers or wait for things to unfold? Look for some spoilers Sell items on the AH one-at-a-time or in a stack? one at a time

UNCATEGORISED

When did you start playing? Middle of Cata Owned memorabilia: Do shirt count?  Add-ons you can’t live without: I...I don’t play with add-ons Things to do to kill time: Achievements | Reputation grinds | PVP | Mount hunting | Pet collecting | Play the auction house

Tagged by: @fatesblades Tagging: @arkhanadorei @styrkvr @ladywindrunner @redeeming-sun @blightyh

[spartanguard]

fanfic meme!

I was tagged by teh bestest @optomisticgirl

Username: spartanguard! It’s been my handle ever since I joined an MSU message board (MSU = Spartans, and I do colorguard) and I’ve used it for almost everything in the last 10+ years.

Fandoms you write for: OUAT is the first and so far only; I’ve dabbled in others (Community, Doctor Who, and there’s a half-written Marvel/DC crossover somewhere) but never published.

Where you post: Mainly here, but also on AO3; I have a FFN account but I haven’t anything there posted in ages.

Most popular one-shot: Going off of notes, looks like it’s close between Some Things Never Change (an S7 spec fic that definitely did not pan out) and Let Me Take Care of You (a brief bit set in 6x08 wherein Killian actually got the medical attention he needed). Considering most of what I write is one-shots, this was hard to figure out, haha.

Most popular multi-chapter story: According to kudos on AO3, it’s Something in the Water; overall, it’s probably my first MC, A Tall Tail

Favorite story you’ve written: I honestly can’t pick. They’re all my babies. But probably the MC I’m most proud of is Savage Garden, and for one-shots, Until The End of the Line.

Story you were nervous to post: all of them lol. but probably my very first one ever, Drunk Dial. oh my god no way that was 5 years ago

How do you choose titles: either song lyrics or terrible puns. that’s about it.

Do you outline: Oh yeah. Mainly because an outline will come to me much quicker than dialogue/details, and once I have one, it’s easier to go from there (or change things later if I get another idea). It’s a habit I picked up in my brief journalism career (age 17-19) and it’s stuck.

How many of your stories are complete: All but one, haha. 

How many of your stories are in progress: There’s only one officially abandoned WIP and it’s been like that for 4+ years with no one noticing...but if we’re talking about WIP folders, then I’d rather not count. But there’s a lot in there at various stages of being written/outlined.

Coming soon: Whatever I finish next? Most likely a one-shot that I wrote 90% of a while ago and then got stuck when it came time to write the smut part. But I might also start working on that long-abandoned WIP, too (a Hunger Games AU)

Do you accept prompts: I don’t not accept them...I just don’t solicit them very often. There are a handful sitting in my inbox that may or may not get written. (My sincere apologies to my Mermay prompters...life got hectic and the mermuse swam away.)

Upcoming story you’re most excited to write: ??????????? I’m at that spot where I want to write but I don’t know what so I’m probably going to just start digging through my WIP folder and see what happens, unless something else strikes my fancy. I did start a thing inspired by the song “Joshua” by Dolly Parton that I’d like to finish, as well as a few other one-shots.

that was fun! tagging @sherlockianwhovian @cocohook38 @let-it-raines @snowbellewells @ilovemesomekillianjones @stubble-sandwich and whoever wants to do it!

#tumblr tagging games #fanfic

[curioussubjects]

Non-jittery Thoughts on 15.01

Alright, had some time too calm the hell down, so I could have thoughts beyond a keysmash and a crying emoji. Chances are, too, that I’ll have more to say once I sit down with the episode again. Had to get these initial reactions/musings out of the way first.

This episode did a bang up job setting up the personal plot points for tfw. I’m super excited to see where this is going: Dean’s hell trauma revisited, Sam’s wound and its connection to his own darkness, Cas still struggling with belonging, Dean and Cas’s continuous wrongfootedness coming to a head. It’s going to be a killer of a season emotionally, and I am Here. For. It. 

Full disclosure: the biggest chunk is destiel related. In my defense, Dabb & co. didn’t have to enable me, but here we are.

More thoughts under the cut. 

General Thoughts:

My hype was not squashed! We got a really strong season opener and I’m so happy about it. Sure, we got running ghosts. But overall the episode was incredible; just a solid SPN episode all around. A+ job and kudos to all involved ♥♥♥

The new title card is gorgeous and full of meta potential goodness. See this post for more on that; op hit it on the head I think. For additional analysis, there’s this post from different op that is killer.

Opening sequence with tfw fighting zombie ghosts and running for shelter? Amazing. Showstopping. Breathtaking. 

Dean’s grief over Jack that’s embroiled in his grief for Mary. Just. “He was our kid.” That’s some complicated shit right there. 

Gotta love all the tidbits hinting at what is to come during 15.a, at the very least, if not the larger goal of the season. Reading y’all’s thoughts on the episode has been great so far, and I can’t wait to see what else crops up this week.

                                                              //

On Sam: Currently, Sam’s role in the more interesting aspects of the plot continue to not quite match Dean’s, which has been a problem for a while. I’m seriously hoping that changes some with Eileen’s return, Rowena coming in with some banter maybe next week, and whatever weird curse Sam got with that bullet wound. I’m loving the potential and I’m loving the prospect of having Sam brought back to the center of the plot. I missed some more emotional involvement from him this episode, too, but that should be addressed once things calm down and Sam and Dean can debrief. However, we got peak Sam in a crisis and it’s always a treat to see him do his job. Bless. Him telling the clown to shut up made my night. I love him so much. 

                                                               //

On Belphegor: First off, Alex did such a fantastic job. I giggled a ridiculous amount. Instantly invested in the character as bringer of shenanigans. Was not disappointed. Quick deliciously meta tidbits about Belphegor, some of which may not feature in the show, but are still *chef’s kiss* (x):

Moabite deity responsible for fertility and sexual power (in case the ep wasn’t clear on that lmao)

was worshiped in the form of a phallus (so glad that made it to canon jfc)

is a fallen angel??? hello???

he’s the demonic embodiment of sloth, BUT specifically negligence and apathy (i am screaming isnt negligence the whole ordeal with dean and cas atm...and apathy was the problem with jack’s soulessness) 

rules misogyny and licentious men (yeah ok no wonder he was a fan of younger dean oof)

the juiciest: emerged from hell to investigate marriage among humans (and is conveniently in the peanut gallery of dean and cas’s fight. funny how that happens. hilarious, even.) 

apparently after living as a man to experience sexual pleasure he was appalled and fled back to hell where sex between men and women wasn’t a thing i’m??? what?? (yet in the show he seemed ok with hot dudes ayy)

I’m glad my “horny on main” observation turned out to be so on point jesus. Can’t help but wonder how long he’s gonna stick around. His outside perspective is amusing, at the very least. However, the fact that he barely interacted with Sam, but was a lot interested in Dean as well as Cas (though to a lesser extent) makes me think that he’s doing more than just deus exing them out of zombies and ghosts or offering hell exposition. Seems like he going to expose SOME OTHER STUFF. ABOUT DEAN (AND CAS?). He is the “Lord of Opening” after all. And isn’t using their words and being honest the thing we’re all waiting for wrt to DeanCas?? There’s some opening up that is necessary posthaste. Listen, I know I’ve been saying they need a marriage counselor, but this is not what I had in mind. Pretty on brand, though, I guess lol

I’m also really interested about the coding work the character is doing in continuing to queer Dean’s characterization. Belphegor being himself associated with (male) sexuality, and the show clearly focusing on his attraction to humans of the man variety. I wouldn’t even call it subtextual at this point as Belphegor’s interaction with Dean in the car to was really overt. My hopes that the show might actually be explicit about Dean’s bisexuality is uhhhh getting high again *confetti.* Should also maybe at least note that using a demon to do this is probs not like the best strategy, but at least said demon was 1. not skeevy and 2. mostly sympathetic to the audience. 

This is all assuming, ofc, that Belphegor is not catfishing tfw (there’s precedence, after all -- and kudos to anon and op for the timely observations). 

                                                                  //

On Dean & Cas: I think it’s really damn telling that so much space was given to their relationship as like the most important thing going on with their characters? Obviously they have individual issues to deal with (their own struggles with Chuck, revisiting Dean’s stint in hell....which btw also eventually involves Cas too so *hands*), but my sweet baby jesus the validation feels good. Onwards. 

We actually have a weird amount to unpack here because, as others have said, the tension between them is coming from more than just Mary and Jack -- though Mary and Jack are absolutely the main stressors atm as well as emblematic of problems they’ve had for a long long time.  

I’m gonna start with Dean because boy do I love that dumbass; I want to shake him. So we have Dean: he’s grieving Mary, he’s angry, he’s scared, he’s lashing out. It’s a Thursday. We know he’s angry with Cas because he blames him for Mary’s death, even if indirectly. You know what that reminds me of? Dean hating Jack for causing Cas’s death, even though it wasn’t directly Jack’s fault. More importantly, though, both the loss of Mary and the loss of Cas were caused by the same catalyst: Cas going off on his own to solve a problem instead of asking Dean (and Sam, but really, mostly Dean) for help. Like, it’s the one thing Dean has very clearly expressed that Cas needs to stop doing (hi 12x19). It’s the same mistake Cas has been making for years. There was a false sense of security there during seasons 13 and most of 14, but alas. Again, here we have Dean losing someone because Cas couldn’t just come ask him for help. Like. It makes sense, and it’s understandable, despite Dean’s coping mechanisms being shit. In short, Dean’s actual problem with Cas is less that Mary is dead and more that Cas refuses to learn his lesson wrt them being stronger as a unit rather than doing their own thing and putting themselves and others in unnecessary danger. 

Meanwhile, we have a continuation of Cas just being really sad and heartbroken because not only is Jack dead, but he’s once again unsure about his standing with Dean. He wants to protect his family, he wants to protect Dean, he wants to come back with a win; once more, he goes off on his own to do it and it blows up in his face somehow. As much as I loved Cas getting mad at the end of last season, I get why he’s somewhat subdued again. He has his guilt and grief and doubt to deal with. He doesn’t want to be mad at Dean probably about as much as he doesn’t want Dean to be mad at him. So far I’m not yet seeing the return of the spark we got when Cas was defending Jack last season, but I’m sure Dean walking out rattled him beyond the hurt. I wanna see what else happens to make him leave “in a huff” (a bit of spec on this further down). That said, what I’m most excited about is seeing how Cas gets reintegrated into the family -- pretty sure that’s universal lol.

The juiciest part now, though: I was all about the interplay of distance and care that we saw between them; let’s pause here for a quick sec to appreciate how that same interplay has been such a central part of Dean and Cas’s relationship since always like ugh. So much of the larger plot points in the show have also been situations that kept them from being truly partners as well as being constant interruptions on their ability to USE THEIR FRIGGIN’ WORDS AAAACK. We give Sam a lot of flack, but everything has awful timing in this show. We’ve had moments of honesty and vulnerability, but they’re always always cut short before we actually get somewhere; before they arrive at a place where they can talk about their issues. If the “are you ok” scene isn’t a perfect microcosm of that idk what is  /sigh

So, yeah, the “Are you ok” scene oooh boy. I wasn’t as excited as some of you at this scene being an example that Dean still cared, as that was never a doubt I had in my mind (it was definitely a yes omg just talk jesus moments nevertheless). Dean couldn’t possibly just turn that shit off, no matter how much he thinks he’s done with Cas. Like, please.  What we do have is Dean indulging on his own need to know that Cas is, at least, immediately fine. Triage, if you will. Him walking off before Cas can either elaborate, or, most likely, tell him about Sam, is peak Dean passive-aggressiveness. The meltdown I had in the tags of a gifset of the scene is still relevant:

 #cas's little sigh of idk relief???#like he's so sad and physically fine but he's SO SAD and heartbroken#and here's dean finally not just being cold to him and ASKING ABOUT HIS WELLBEING#look at cas's face in tht second gif my heart#you can see him gd relax too i cant#and dean has his fucking check in during a break in the chaos face#im so mad#jdhakjsdfhklsd#and then dean just.........walks away and doesnt actually debrief or help or none of the things he would do#and cas is just...there all vulnerable and upset right before he clams up at the demon's quip#but it doesnt even last look at his damn face as he leaves IM SO#somebody hug him#skldjfhklsajdfa#he needs a dean hug#but noooo dean is being a jackass#this is awful#im not ok#i hate it when they fight#im over it that's enough drama dabb i take back everything i said about loving pain

I’ll definitely have more thoughts on this once we have whatever emotional payload next week.

All in all, I’m not actually concerned about the future of their relationship. They’ve been through much, they’ll be fine. I am, though, tickled that we’ll see these key problems in their relationship reach a point where they have to be dealt with. Also: I can’t wait for the catharsis that Cas leaving is bound to elicit. Both for us, the viewers, and the characters. Besides, Dean needs to go to a corner and have a think about his behavior and if pushing Cas away is really what he wants. And then maybe finally we can get that sweet sweet resolution of an affirmation about Cas’s place in Dean’s life. And in turn an affirmation that Cas does trust their family unit enough to depend on them. 

I think we got a good set up in this episode leading into whatever drama we get in the coming weeks. The tension was up to 11. Love it. Hate it. Personally, I think the empty deal might be what does sets off Cas walking out. Somehow, the deal is not a secret anymore. We have here another instance of Cas making a super important decision that affects The Family on his own and then keeping it a secret (to protect Sam and Dean, a pattern). Dean can be angry and think Cas is dead to him all he wants, he will blow tf up when he learns about this deal. Sam isn’t gonna be thrilled either, though he’s more likely to make puppy eyes of sadness and Disappointment than yell at Cas. Seriously, though, I can just see Dean saying some bullshit because he’s just so done and here goes Cas potentially dying again, which in turn will probably piss Cas off. Etc etc. Cue the violins. 

                                                               //

tl;dr: if episode 1 is any indication, we’re in for a wild fucking ride, kiddos. hold onto your butts!!! 

#supernatural #spn #destiel #deancas #spn spoilers #spn15 #spn meta #my stuff #ok thoughts still a little jittery #but my brain is so hyped i needed to let these go into the ether #before i could sit down and write any sort of coherent argument #gosh i do love this show so much